Huawei unveils Atlas 960E superpod linking 4,096 NPUs with near-packaged optics

Huawei unveiled the Atlas 960E superpod, which links up to 4,096 NPUs using near-packaged optics (NPO) and claims eight exaflops at FP8 precision and up to one petabyte of high-bandwidth memory.

Its Hi-ONE engine provides 7.2 terabits per second of transmission capacity, and Huawei says 5,500 engines replace 48,000 conventional 800G optical modules, cutting power consumption by more than 550 kilowatts.

Huawei has proposed its NPO implementation agreement to the Optical Internetworking Forum, though it has not yet become a standard.