Huawei reveals roadmap for 1.4nm chips by 2031
What's the story
Huawei has unveiled an ambitious plan to produce advanced semiconductors with a transistor density of 1.4 nanometers (nm) by 2031. The announcement comes as the US continues to impose restrictions on China's access to high-end chip manufacturing technology. The Shenzhen-based tech giant's new strategy is based on the Tau Scaling Law, which aims at improving chip performance without further miniaturizing transistors.
Innovative strategy
Chip performance improvement
The Tau Scaling Law, unlike the conventional "make everything smaller" approach, emphasizes speeding up signal transmission within the chip for overall performance improvement. He Tingbo, Huawei's semiconductor division head, unveiled this innovative concept at a major tech conference in Shanghai. The company plans to implement this new strategy in its upcoming Kirin chips with a novel design called LogicFolding.
Design innovation
LogicFolding design
The LogicFolding design is all about reducing internal wiring and improving efficiency. Over the last six years, Huawei has already launched hundreds of these innovative chips for a variety of applications, from smartphones to AI computing. This shows their commitment to staying competitive globally in the semiconductor industry despite facing challenges due to US restrictions on advanced chip technology exports.
Self-sufficiency efforts
Efforts to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency
Huawei has been at the forefront of China's semiconductor self-sufficiency efforts amid a years-long US-led, multinational campaign to restrict exports of advanced chips and equipment. These restrictions have somewhat hindered China's AI progress. In September, Huawei had unveiled a three-year plan to launch a range of AI chips as replacements for NVIDIA's most advanced semiconductors that are banned from entering China.