Huawei has unveiled the Ascend 960DT, a next-generation AI accelerator intended to give Chinese developers a stronger domestic alternative as US export restrictions limit access to Nvidia’s newest chips. Due in the first quarter of 2027—three quarters earlier than expected—the processor could become China’s best readily available option, despite remaining well behind leading Western hardware in raw performance.

The 960DT is expected to offer up to 288GB of Huawei’s HiZQ memory and four petaflops of FP4 performance, roughly double the 950 series’ capacity and performance. Huawei plans to offset its lower chip-level performance through large-scale systems using near-packaged optics, potentially linking 4,096 accelerators and delivering up to 16 exaflops; the company claims this technology cuts power use by 550 kilowatts, halves failure rates and enables 99.8% uptime. A compute-focused 960PR variant is planned for the third quarter of 2027, while previous Huawei systems reportedly struggled with demanding workloads such as DeepSeek’s training.