Huawei reveals giant new AI chip cluster as Nvidia’s China issues rise

BEIJING — Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei announced Thursday new computing systems for powering artificial intelligence with its in-house Ascend chips, as it steps up pressure on U.S. rival Nvidia.

The company said it plans to launch its new “Atlas 950 SuperCluster” as soon as next year.

The U.S. has sought to cut China off from the most advanced semiconductors for training AI models. To cope, Chinese companies have turned more to grouping large numbers of less efficient, often homegrown, chips together to achieve similar computing capabilities.

Under Huawei’s AI computing infrastructure, a supercluster is connected to multiple superpods, which, in turn, are built from multiple supernodes. Supernodes, which form the base, are built on Ascend chips, using system design to overcome technical limitations imposed by U.S. sanctions.

Huawei said its new Atlas 950 supernode would support 8,192 Ascend chips, and that the Atlas 950 SuperCluster would use more than 500,000 chips.

A more advanced Atlas 960 version, slated for launch in 2027, would support 15,488 Ascend chips per node. The full supercluster would have more than 1 million Ascend chips, according to Huawei.

It was not immediately clear how the systems compared with those powered by Nvidia chips. Huawei claimed in a press release that the new supernodes would be the world’s most powerful by computing power for several years.

“Huawei’s announcement on its computing breakthrough is well timed with recent increasing emphasis by the Chinese government on self-reliance on China’s own chip technologies,” said George Chen, partner and co-chair, digital practice, The Asia Group.

While he cautioned that Huawei might exaggerate its technical capabilities, Chen pointed out that the Chinese company’s ambition to be a world AI leader “cannot be underestimated.”

Research firm SemiAnalysis found in April that Huawei’s self-developed CloudMatrix system was able to perform better than Nvidia’s — despite each Ascend chip delivering only about one-third the performance of an Nvidia processor. Huawei built its advantage by having five times as many chips.

“Computing power has and will continue to be the key for AI,” Eric Xu, vice chairman and rotating chairman of Huawei, said Thursday in a statement, translated by CNBC. He was speaking at the opening of the company’s annual Huawei Connect event in Shanghai. The event runs through Saturday.

Two years ago at the same event, Huawei announced its Atlas 900 SuperCluster. The company currently sells a “Atlas 900 AI Cluster” with “thousands” of Ascend chips.

Huawei’s announcement comes as China promotes homegrown alternatives to Nvidia. Earlier this week, the two countries wrapped up trade talks in Spain that included a path toward resolving the long-contested U.S. operations of social media app TikTok, owned by Beijing-based startup ByteDance.

In another aggressive signal, China on Monday announced it was extending a probe into Nvidia over alleged monopolistic practices.

Pressure has only risen since on the U.S. chipmaker. Its shares fell more than 2% Wednesday after the Financial Times, citing sources, said China has ordered local tech giants to stop tests and orders of the Nvidia RTX Pro 6000D chip.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told reporters he was “disappointed” to hear the news of the reported ban. He’s previously described Huawei as a “formidable” competitor.