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On the first day of the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Shanghai, Huawei said that the global semiconductor industry needs a different development principle, and the company already has its own solution. He Tingbo, who manages Huawei ‘s semiconductor business and chairs the company’s Scientific Committee, said that over the past six years, Huawei has been developing the Tau (τ) Scaling Law concept and is now implementing it in its own chip line.
According to He Tingbo, geometric scaling, the gradual reduction in transistor size that has driven the industry for more than 50 years, no longer delivers the same efficiency. Therefore, Tau Scaling Law shifts the focus of design to the time it takes for signals and data to travel through the chip and its associated system. The logic behind the approach is that reducing this time allows for further improvements in performance and effective transistor density without depending on the manufacturing breakthroughs that Huawei has lost access to due to restrictions.
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During her speech entitled “New Semiconductor Path in Practice”, He Tingbo presented the LogicFolding architecture. Huawei said that it provides for a new organization of electronic component layouts to shorten critical signal transmission paths and reduce resistive and capacitive load during signal propagation. The company said that Kirin chips will be the first to receive the new architecture, which is scheduled for launch in the fall.
By 2031, the company expects to design high-performance chips with a transistor density equivalent to the 1.4 nm process. Most industry participants expect this level to be reached by the end of the decade thanks to extreme ultraviolet lithography, the equipment for which Chinese companies cannot legally purchase.
According to He Tingbo, over the past six years, Huawei has designed and mass-produced 381 Tau-based chips for smartphones, AI computing, and other product categories that the company did not specify. At the moment, these data remain solely Huawei’s statement – no independent verification of the above figure has been conducted.
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Over the past four years, Washington has been tightening export restrictions on lithography equipment, design software, and high-speed memory needed to produce state-of-the-art chips. The Dutch company ASML, which produces the extreme ultraviolet lithography systems that Huawei needs to produce 1.4 nm chips, is not allowed to supply its most powerful equipment to China. And the MATCH Act, which is currently being discussed in Washington, could further tighten restrictions. So Huawei is trying to adapt its technological approaches to the current environment.
Time will tell whether Tau Scaling Law will become a holistic new design philosophy or a rethinking of already known methods of circuit optimization at the level of electronic components. However, the company has called on scientists, engineers, and industry partners to join the effort.
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