China's Huawei hypes up chip and computing power plans in fresh challenge to Nvidia

• Huawei breaks years of silence to outline chip and computing power plans
• Says it now has its own high-bandwidth memory
• Announcement comes ahead of meeting between Xi and Trump on Friday
• China has told firms not to buy Nvidia chips, FT and source say

By Brenda Goh and Che Pan

SHANGHAI, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Huawei outlined its long-term chip plans for the first time on Thursday and said it would launch some of the world's most powerful computing systems - underscoring China's drive to wean itself off foreign semiconductor suppliers like Nvidia NVDA.O.

In an announcement that broke years of secrecy about its chips business and which could increase the stakes in the U.S.-Sino war for tech supremacy, Huawei HWT.UL detailed timelines for its Ascend artificial intelligence chips and Kunpeng server chips.

Eric Xu, Huawei's current rotating chairman, also said the company now has proprietary high-bandwidth memory - technology currently dominated by South Korea's SK Hynix 000660.KS and Samsung Electronics 005930.KS.

"We will follow a 1-year release cycle and double compute with each release," Xu told the annual Huawei Connect conference in the commercial hub of Shanghai.

China has in recent weeks stepped up efforts that target Nvidia, the world's dominant AI chipmaker, while trumpeting domestic chip manufacturing.

Chinese authorities on Monday accused Nvidia of violating the country's anti-monopoly law. They have also ordered top tech firms to halt purchases of Nvidia's AI chips and cancel existing orders, according to a Financial Times report and a source with knowledge of the matter.

Huawei's announcement is likely to be seen as carefully timed for maximum impact ahead of a meeting by U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday. The meeting follows the conclusion of talks by U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators this week.

"China is trying to say that they're doing very well on many fronts ... Xi Jinping will be more confident when speaking with Donald Trump," said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

"People assume that the situation is getting better, that everything is moving in the right direction, that U.S.-China tensions will be eased to some extent but I'm thinking this is not the case, actually it's quietly escalating."

SUPERNODES

Huawei first announced plans to enter chipmaking in 2018. But it went dark about those efforts after it was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019, accused by Washington of presenting a national security risk. It denies that charge.

Since then, analysts say it has become a leader in Chinese efforts to develop a domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry.

Huawei launched its latest AI chip, the Ascend 910C, in the first quarter of this year. Its successor, the Ascend 950 will be launched next year and will come in two variants, Xu said. That will then be followed by the 960 version in 2027 and the 970 in 2028.

In addition, Huawei plans to roll out new computing power supernodes that allow chips to interconnect at high speeds. Nodes can be described as a rack system that contains numerous chips. Nodes are then grouped into clusters.

The Atlas 950 will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2026, supporting 8,192 Ascend chips. Xu said Huawei is confident that the Atlas 950 "will far exceed its counterparts across all major metrics".

The Atlas 960, which will support 15,488 Ascend chips, will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2027.

The supernodes are successors to the Atlas 900, also known as the CloudMatrix 384, which uses 384 of Huawei's latest 910C chips.

"Huawei is leveraging its strengths in networking, along with China's advantages in power supply, to aggressively push supernodes and offset lagging chip manufacturing," said Wang Shen, data center infrastructure practice lead at tech research firm Omdia.

New versions of Huawei's Kunpeng server chip will also be launched in 2026 and 2028, Xu said.

Despite advances by Huawei and other Chinese chip firms in recent years, people involved in engineering operations at Chinese tech firms say Nvidia's chips perform better.

The extent to which China has access to Nvidia's world-leading chips has been a key point of friction between the U.S. and China. The U.S. has deployed export controls so that Nvidia can sell only downgraded versions of its chips but has recently rolled back some of its most severe restrictions.

Washington has also imposed export controls so that firms like Huawei cannot use advanced U.S. chip manufacturing technology.

"For Huawei to come out at this point and openly show strength with its AI chips, I think it reflects both that domestic advanced chip manufacturing capacity is no longer such a big constraint for marketing the product, and that there's growing confidence U.S. export controls are not really threatening this process anymore," said Tilly Zhang, analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics.

Chinese semiconductor firms .CSI931865 rose 3.4% after the Financial Times reported that Chinese top tech firms had been ordered to halt purchases of Nvidia AI chips.

According to one person in China's chip distribution sector, his company recently received an oral order to halt buying from Nvidia and was told that distributors could now only sell stockpiled Nvidia AI chips.

The person was not authorised to speak on the matter and declined to be identified. China's cyberspace regulator has not responded to a Reuters request for comment.

Asked about the reported ban, China's foreign ministry said China is willing to maintain dialogue with all parties involved to keep global supply chains stable.