DeepSeek partners with Huawei, open-sourcing TileLang-based programming tools and libraries for Ascend chips as a CUDA alternative
On Sept 29, 2026 DeepSeek said on its official WeChat account that it is working with Huawei on programming tools for Huawei's Ascend AI chips. It is open-sourcing Ascend infrastructure built around TileLang, a high-level open-source language for AI kernels, plus compute and communication libraries. The aim is an "independent, self-controlled" software stack that lowers Chinese developers' reliance on Nvidia's CUDA.
Key facts
- Announced on DeepSeek's official WeChat account on Sept 29, 2026 (Reuters)
- Open-sourced: TileLang support for Ascend, plus Ascend-optimized compute and communication libraries (operators, matrix computation, inter-card communication, attention, data filtering, per secondary reports)
- DeepSeek says TileLang offers 'a simpler programming model' than CUDA while reaching the hardware's full performance
- DeepSeek: 'To build a new generation of independent, self-controlled GPU software ecosystems, the first priority is establishing a high-level language that is universal, easy to program' and still reaches full performance
- The two companies also worked on a supernode of 128 Ascend 950 processors, optimizing how computation and chip-to-chip communication are distributed (Reuters via Techzine)
- Background: Huawei's own CANN stack had been criticized as hard and unstable to use; TileLang is an existing open-source tile-based kernel language that DeepSeek had used for GPU kernels before
What happened
DeepSeek announced the partnership and the open-source release on WeChat. It covers a high-level programming language (TileLang) with an Ascend backend and libraries for compute and inter-chip communication. These mirror the toolkit DeepSeek had built for Nvidia GPUs.
Why it matters
Nvidia's lock on AI chips rests largely on CUDA. China's leading open-model lab is now publishing a developer stack for Huawei's chips, which tackles the software barrier as well as the hardware one. Its V4 models already run on Ascend.
Unverified: the exact names of the released repositories were not in the reports read for this run.
Changelog
- 2026-09-30: created (quick run on Techmeme Sept 30)
Related events
- DeepSeek V4 preview: 1.6T-parameter open MoE running on Huawei Ascend ★★★★★
- Huawei sets Ascend 950 cluster cloud launch (China Sept 30, global Nov 30) and Ascend 960 roadmap ★★★
- DeepSeek V4.1 Pro enters gray testing as reports say DeepSeek is training a 2T model and planning an 8T one on Huawei chips ★★★
- The Information: China asks ByteDance, Alibaba and others for Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 purchase plans and signals approval ★★
Sources (5)
- pressReuters via Investing.com: DeepSeek partners with Huawei to develop chip programming tools, reducing reliance on Nvidia
- pressUS News (Reuters): DeepSeek partners with Huawei to develop chip programming tools
- pressSDxCentral: DeepSeek teams up with Huawei to beef up Ascend chip programming tools
- pressTechzine: DeepSeek brings AI software to Huawei's Ascend chips
- codeTileLang on GitHub
id: 2026-09-29-deepseek-huawei-tilelang-ascend · updated 2026-09-30 · open in the interactive timeline