Huawei unveils Ascend chip roadmap and Atlas computing platforms

Huawei has stated at its annual Huawei Connect conference in Shanghai that it will roll out four new iterations of its Ascend artificial intelligence (AI) chip series over the next three years. The announcement was made by Vice Chairman Eric Xu, who also detailed plans for powerful computing platforms called Atlas.

The roadmap was shared in September 2025. Huawei released the Ascend 910C earlier in 2025. The company plans to launch next year two variants of its successor, the Ascend 950, followed by the Ascend 960 in 2027 and the Ascend 970 in 2028.

Key chip and compute platform plans

According to the presentation, Huawei has overcome a core limitation by developing its own high-bandwidth memory technology, which had been reliant on U.S. and South Korean suppliers. The Ascend 950 chips, which launch in 2026, will have versions suited to different AI workloads. The later models 960 and 970 are designed to offer greater computing power and memory capacity.

In addition, Huawei introduced computing platforms Atlas 950 and Atlas 960. Atlas 950 is designed to support 8,192 Ascend chips; Atlas 960 will support 15,488 chips. These new platforms are successors to Huawei’s Atlas 900 systems. According to Huawei, the architecture involves “supernodes” that facilitate very high-speed interconnectivity among many chips.

Conditions for implementation

Huawei emphasised the importance of self-sufficiency in computing power. At the conference, Eric Xu said computing power has always been, and will continue to be, key to China's AI strategy. He noted that the new high-bandwidth memory tech is part of the plan to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers.

The roadmap assumes that the new chip generations and platforms will be developed on schedule. Huawei did not specify which foundries will manufacture the new chips. It also did not detail all production capacities or costs.