Huawei touts new chipmaking technology to sidestep US restrictions

SHANGHAI

Chinese tech giant Huawei said on May 25 it had developed a new way of making semiconductors that could get around its U.S.-enforced lack of access to the most advanced chipmaking equipment.

Sanctions since 2019 have cut Huawei's access to components and technologies made by the United States and some of its allies, including the lithography machines used to make the world's most advanced chips.

But yesterday the head of Huawei's semiconductor division He Tingbo said that the company will be able to produce next-generation 1.4-nanometer (1.4nm) chips by 2031.

Taiwan's TSMC, the industry leader, has projected it will be able to do the same by 2028.

Huawei's announcement suggests it might have sidestepped the need for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, which have been considered crucial for mass manufacturing chips of 5nm or under.

She said the new technique came about through a shift in how chipmaking has historically been conceptualised.

"Moore's Law" is a principle developed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore which states the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years.

A higher density of transistors results in a smaller chip or one the same size with faster processing power.

He on Monday proposed "the Tau Scaling Law", or "Her's Law", by which instead of optimising for space, designers optimize for the time taken for the various elements making up a chip to communicate.

This overcomes a key challenge facing Moore's Law that Intel sums up as: "You can make something smaller and smaller and smaller... until you can't."

U.S. sanctions have meant that "these challenges arrived earlier and are tougher" for Huawei, He said.