Huawei unveiled new NPO solution for the Ascend 960 SuperPoD AI infrastructure

At Huawei Connect 2026 in Shanghai on September 17, Huawei unveiled its third-generation optical interconnect architecture using Near-Packaged Optics (NPO) for the Ascend 960 SuperPoD AI infrastructure. Key takeaways: Huawei's adoption of NPO technology supports our view that China is likely to establish a competitive edge in this new product. The progression from discrete optics in the Atlas 910C to LPO in the Atlas 950 and NPO in the Atlas 960 highlights Huawei's rapid optical-interconnect evolution. The 7.2 Tbps NPO optical engine operates across 36 channels at 200 Gbps per lane, exceeding the 6.4 Tbps, 32-lane interfaces under development by groups such as the OIF, while reducing communication latency to 10 ns and lowering power consumption. The Ascend 960 SuperPoD can scale to 4,096 NPU cards via UnifiedBus, delivering up to 8 Exaflops of FP8 computing power and 1 PB of unified HBM. Huawei also launched the "OPEN NPO" initiative and MSA with China Mobile Research Institute, JD Clo