Huawei bets on speed over shrinking transistors to sidestep US chip sanctions

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By Eduardo Baptista and Che PanHuawei's new chip design principle focused on boosting transmission speed rather than continuing to shrink semiconductors offers a path for China to build cutting-edge chips despite U.S. sanctions, though whether it represents a true breakthrough remains to be seen.China has been barred since 2019 from importing ASML's EURONEXT:ASML most advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, curbing the ability of its chipmakers to keep up with global leaders like Taiwan's TSMC TWSE:2330 in relying on ever-smaller manufacturing processes that make chips more powerful.For decades, the semiconductor industry has been governed by Moore's Law - the observation that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles roughly every two years.Huawei this week unveiled an alternative approach: cutting the time signals take to move through chips and larger computing systems using a principle it calls the Tau Scaling Law.Its central technique, LogicFolding, aims to arrange logic, analogue and memory circuits in stacked, more tightly connected structures, potentially improving density, efficiency and clock speeds over the next decade.Proponents see it as a way to extend chip progress as manufacturing advances begin to slow."For Huawei, chips face two key constraints. One is inevitable that Moore's Law will hit a physical 'wall' within the next decade," He Tingbo, the president of Huawei's semiconductor business, told China's People's Daily this week."The other is accidental because of the external restrictions that Huawei encountered this 'wall' earlier than its peers," she said, in a likely reference to U.S. sanctions on importing advanced EUV machines.But others argue that reducing latency has always been part of semiconductor design and that many of the underlying ideas resemble existing work in three-dimensional (3D) stacking, advanced packaging and system optimisation."This is a breakthrough for Huawei, but it's not a threat for TSMC," Nvidia NASDAQ:NVDA CEO Jensen Huang told reporters in Taipei on Thursday. "TSMC has been using die stacking and 3D packaging for how long now? Almost 10 years. And so TSMC's technology is very advanced."NOT A NEW CONCEPT?In the race to build more powerful computing systems, the chip industry has already embraced advanced packaging technologies that stack chips vertically.TSMC has been at the forefron...

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