China's Huawei develops new chipmaking technology amid US curbs

Chinese tech giant Huawei said on Monday that it had developed a new method of manufacturing semiconductors that could bypass its lack of access to the most advanced chipmaking equipment, which has been restricted under US policy, News.Az reports, citing AFP.

Huawei has in recent years been at the centre of a geopolitical standoff after Washington warned that its equipment could be used for espionage by the Chinese government, an allegation the company denies.

Sanctions imposed since 2019 have cut Huawei’s access to components and technologies produced in the United States and certain allied countries, including lithography machines that are essential for producing the world’s most advanced chips.

However, on Monday, the head of Huawei’s semiconductor division, He Tingbo, said the company would be capable of producing next-generation 1.4-nanometre (1.4nm) chips by 2031.

By comparison, Taiwan’s TSMC, the industry leader, has projected that it will reach the same level by 2028.

Cutting-edge chips that are used to train and power artificial intelligence systems are a critical and highly sensitive part of the ongoing technology competition between the United States and China.

Over the decades, chip computing power has increased dramatically as manufacturers have been able to pack more microscopic electronic components into the same space.

Huawei’s announcement suggests it may have found a way to bypass the need for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, which have long been considered essential for the mass production of chips at 5nm and below.

“Over the past six years, I have often been asked… how did you survive and come back on top?” He said in a presentation at the International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) in Shanghai.

She added that the new technique emerged from a shift in how chipmaking has traditionally been conceptualised.

“Moore’s Law” is a principle developed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, stating that the number of transistors—devices that control the flow of electricity—on a chip doubles approximately every two years.

A higher transistor density leads to smaller chips or chips of the same size with significantly greater processing power.

He on Monday introduced “the Tau Scaling Law,” also referred to as “Her’s Law,” which proposes that instead of optimising for physical space, designers should optimise for the time required for different components of a chip to communicate.

This approach addresses a key limitation of Moore’s Law, which Intel summarises as: “You can make something smaller and smaller and smaller… until you can’t.”

He noted that US sanctions have made “these challenges arrive earlier and be more difficult” for Huawei.

“Our solution is feasible and affordable. The performance of the new chip can fully compete with that of the other path,” she said.

Huawei said its next iteration of the Kirin chip, scheduled for release in the autumn, will be the first to fully adopt an architecture called “LogicFolding” based on this new principle.

George Chen, Partner and Chair of Digital Practice at The Asia Group, said the Tau Scaling Law “underscores the company’s ambition to lead rather than follow in the global chip race.”

“Even without a new product launch today, Huawei’s intent is clear — and its trajectory will likely heighten US concerns.”

News.Az 

By Nijat Babayev