Huawei Unveils Atlas 960 SuperPoD, a Word Attendees Agreed Not to Look Up
The system links thousands of Ascend chips into a single computing cluster, which the company says will reduce reliance on U.S. semiconductors and on knowing what "PoD" stands for.
SHANGHAI — Huawei unveiled the Atlas 960 SuperPoD on Wednesday, a large-scale AI computing system that connects thousands of its domestically produced Ascend processors into a tightly coupled cluster, in a keynote whose 4,000 attendees reached an unspoken consensus not to ask about the name.
"The SuperPoD represents a new paradigm in system-level compute," said a Huawei executive, pronouncing the capital D with an audible emphasis that several reporters later described as "a dare."
The company also published a multiyear roadmap for its Ascend 970 and 980 chip generations, which it says will close the performance gap with U.S. hardware by scaling out, connecting more chips more tightly, and "not needing anyone's permission." Huawei said the approach delivers competitive throughput on training workloads, provided customers have "a large building, a large budget, and a relaxed attitude toward cooling."
Analysts said the system is a genuine engineering achievement under export restrictions that have cut Chinese firms off from the most advanced chipmaking equipment. "They can't make the fastest chip," said one. "So they made a lot of chips and a very large word."
Huawei confirmed that the name is a stylized rendering of "point of delivery," a data-center term, and expressed mild surprise that anyone had found it confusing. A junior product marketing manager who reportedly asked in an internal channel whether "SuperPoD" would "read weird in English" has been reassigned to the Kirin division.
The company also raised prices on its accelerators by 20 to 50 percent, citing a shortage of high-bandwidth memory, and said it expects demand to remain strong "given the alternatives, which are none."