Huawei to Launch Next Generation AI Chip ‘Ascend 950DT’ in August… “New Generation Every Year, 2x Performance Gains”

• Huawei announced that its AI chip roadmap is advancing at a pace of “one new generation per year, with computing power doubling,” and stated that it plans to formally introduce its next generation AI chip, the Ascend 950DT, to Huawei Cloud in August. Compared to the previous generation, the 950DT delivers significant improvements in vector computing performance, memory bandwidth, and chip to chip interconnect bandwidth, and supports FP8 low precision computation natively. Huawei also said it has greatly improved development convenience and model tuning efficiency.

• Huawei noted that the burden of AI model training costs is growing due to a global shortage of AI computing resources and rising memory prices, and that the ability to provide a stable supply of computing resources along with continuous performance upgrades is a key factor determining autonomous driving competitiveness. Built on its own AI chips and a domestic Chinese supply chain, Huawei Cloud has constructed large scale AI clusters in locations such as Gui’an, Wuhu, and Inner Mongolia, and operates cloud infrastructure spanning 34 regions and 102 availability zones worldwide.

• More than 30 automakers and component suppliers are currently collaborating with Huawei in areas including autonomous driving, connected cars, overseas expansion, and smart manufacturing, and Huawei explained that each day more than 2 million autonomous vehicles and over 60 million connected vehicles are linked to Huawei Cloud. In addition, more than 100,000 Ascend AI accelerators support the training and upgrading of autonomous driving models.

• Huawei emphasized that it has recently been deeply involved in the AI model development processes of major autonomous driving companies, working on optimizing Ascend chip performance and improving the scalability of AI clusters with more than 1,000 cards.

• The market is interpreting this announcement as a signal that China continues to push forward with the localization of AI infrastructure and the building of an ecosystem to replace NVIDIA. In particular, the level that the Ascend 950DT reaches in terms of actual performance and supply scale is expected to be an important point to watch for China’s AI industry.