Dutch company ASML makes extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV, machines. TSMC, Samsung, and Intel all use them to mass-produce chips at 5nm and below. Industry consensus holds that EUV is essential at that scale. If Huawei’s plan works, it would upend that assumption.
Huawei’s semiconductor chief He Tingbo announced the plan at a chip conference on Monday. TSMC has said it will begin mass production of 1.4nm chips in 2028, putting Huawei three years behind — down from a current gap of roughly five years.
Moore’s Law Is Dead?
The nanometer figure refers to transistor size. Smaller transistors mean more can be packed onto a chip, making it more powerful. Chips at 5nm and below power the most advanced AI systems.
The industry has long relied on Moore’s Law — named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore — which holds that transistor counts double roughly every two years. He said Huawei’s progress under Moore’s Law stalled six years ago when US export controls took effect.
Her team then developed what Huawei calls the Tau Scaling Law, a “time scaling” method that boosts data transmission speed to compensate for the inability to shrink transistors further without cutting-edge equipment.
“We saw time scaling can deliver strong benefits across devices, circuits, chips and systems,” He said. Huawei has designed and produced 381 chips over six years using this principle. The company is calling it “Her’s Law,” a nod to its chip chief.
Kitty Fok, managing director of IDC China, said the Tau Scaling Law draws on existing industry trends but appears to be the first time a company has formalised them into a single theory. “It may also provide a new reference point for China’s semiconductor industry in overcoming process-node constraints,” she said.
The Surprise This Fall
Huawei’s LogicFolding technology, built on the Tau Scaling Law, increases transistor count and optimises data transmission speed on a chip. He said the architecture will debut in Huawei’s Kirin mobile chips launching this fall.
“This year we have prepared a surprise for the whole industry. Not saturation, not continuation, but a big leap ahead,” she said.
He did not specify how her team plans to advance chipmaking without EUV. She said only that they had found a path for “sustainable evolution.” Huawei has also filed patents for self-aligned quadruple patterning, or SAQP — a technique that etches circuit lines onto silicon wafers multiple times to increase transistor density without EUV machines.
Shares of Huawei’s manufacturing partner, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., or SMIC, rose more than 19% in Shanghai after the announcement.
China’s Nvidia Gap
Whether Huawei can actually reach the cutting edge of chipmaking through this path remains unproven.
The company sits at the centre of China’s push for semiconductor self-sufficiency, following a US-led export control campaign that has restricted access to advanced chips and equipment. In September, Huawei announced a three-year roadmap to develop AI chips intended to replace Nvidia products, whose most advanced models are banned from sale in China.
(With input from agencies)
