Huawei aims for 1.4nm chip density by 2031, bypassing Moore's Law

At a semiconductor conference in Shanghai on May 24, Huawei announced that its high-end chips will achieve a transistor density equivalent to the 1.4nm process by 2031, although it did not provide independent performance data.

According to Reuters, this ambition is noteworthy because China's most advanced chip manufacturing capacity is currently estimated to be around 7nm. TSMC, the world's largest advanced chip manufacturer, uses a 2nm process and expects to apply 1.4nm in mass production by 2028. China is reportedly finding it very difficult to reach this level through traditional manufacturing methods because the US has blocked its access to new-generation lithography machines and other key semiconductor technologies.

Huawei stated that it can no longer rely on Moore's Law, which aims to shrink transistors for breakthroughs in computing, as they are already very small, measured in just a few atoms. Therefore, the company introduced the new Tau Extended Law to improve chips, focusing on reducing the time it takes for signals and data to travel through chips and computing systems.

According to He Tingbo, head of Huawei's semiconductor division, the company has created a breakthrough design called LogicFolding for its next-generation Kirin chips. Instead of increasing performance by shrinking transistors, which requires extreme ultraviolet lithography machines that China cannot access, the company "folds" traditional 2D circuits into a vertical 3D skyscraper-like structure, essentially stacking chips on top of each other.

The Kirin chips for smartphones, expected to be released by the end of the year, will be the first to use the LogicFolding design, shortening internal wiring and significantly improving performance. This design will also be applied to Ascend chips by 2030, as well as large AI clusters comprising hundreds or thousands of chips operating data centers.

Huawei added that its chip division has designed and mass-produced 381 chips over the past six years based on the Tau Extended Law to serve fields such as smartphones and AI computing.

He Tingbo admitted that the new approach still faces significant challenges, such as the need to develop new design tools suitable for the Tau Extended Law and to prevent overheating, from chips for mobile devices to AI data centers. "With all the current limitations, we have found some quite good solutions. I can confidently say that in the next 10 years, our mobile and AI computing solutions will be competitive," she said.

According to NBC News, Huawei's announcement attracted significant attention on Chinese social media platform Weibo. Some users called it a "DeepSeek moment" for the country's chip industry, while others suggested that US restrictions have encouraged innovation. "The more barriers from the West, the more breakthroughs China will make," one Weibo user wrote.

In 2019, Huawei was heavily impacted when it was placed on the US trade blacklist, preventing it from doing business with US companies. Additional restrictions in 2020 further prevented them from cooperating with chip manufacturer TSMC. In 2021, Huawei's consumer business, once its largest revenue generator, halved from the previous year to $34 billion.

However, the company began to recover in 2023 by launching the Mate 60 Pro smartphone, which contained an advanced chip manufactured in China. This 5G chip surprised many by demonstrating Huawei's rapid progress without TSMC. Speaking to People's Daily in June last year, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei stated that the company's Ascend chips were lagging behind US rivals, but that the company had found ways to improve performance. He also mentioned that the company is investing $25.07 billion in research and development annually.