SHANGHAI, May 26– Chinese telecoms firm Huawei has unveiled its chip design approach at a major industry conference in Shanghai, referring to it as the Tau Scaling Law, “a new guiding principle for the future of semiconductors.”
The announcement signals a potential new path for sustained evolution when the traditional roadmap of Moore’s Law — the long-held industry belief that transistor density doubles every 18 to 24 months — has been slowing down due to physical and economic limits.
In a keynote speech at the ongoing 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, He Tingbo, president of Huawei’s semiconductor business department, explained that with this approach, the industry could focus on shrinking time, rather than continuously shrinking the physical size of transistors, a method known as geometric scaling.
Named after the Greek letter tau (τ), which represents time constants in physics, the approach aims to systematically reduce signal delay across entire electronic systems, she said.
The core idea is that task completion time, rather than the size of individual transistors, should be the optimization target for electronic systems. Chips can become faster, more energy-efficient, and more densely integrated — without relying solely on making individual transistors smaller.
Along these lines, Huawei has used a technique called LogicFolding, which reorganizes circuit layouts to shorten the physical paths electrical signals must travel, said He. This reduces resistance and capacitance, effectively boosting both performance and transistor density.
According to He, Huawei has already been applying this principle across multiple levels, from individual devices to entire computing systems. Over the past six years, the company has designed and mass-produced 381 different chips using the Tau Scaling Law, serving a wide range of industries.
Later this year, in the fall of 2026, Huawei plans to launch its new Kirin chips, which will be the first to fully integrate the LogicFolding architecture for a significant performance boost, she said.
Looking ahead, Huawei projected that by 2031, high-end chips designed under the Tau Scaling Law will achieve transistor densities equivalent to those of 1.4-nanometer processes.
“We believe that openness and collaboration are key to driving ongoing progress in the semiconductor industry,” she said, inviting global scientists, engineers, and industry partners to work together under the Tau Scaling Law to ensure the sustainable evolution of semiconductors and electronics. (Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
