Huawei Technologies Co expects its premium chips to achieve transistor density equivalent to 1.4-nanometer processes by 2031 under a new semiconductor development framework, the company announced on Monday at a conference in Shanghai.

He Tingbo, Huawei board member and president of its semiconductor business, formally introduced the "Tau Scaling Law" in a keynote speech titled "New Semiconductor Path in Practice".

Unlike traditional approaches that rely on miniaturizing transistors — an industry paradigm increasingly challenged by physical limits and diminishing cost benefits — the new methodology prioritizes reducing signal propagation time across devices, circuits, chips and systems, said He, adding that Huawei has already designed and mass-produced 381 chips based on the Tau Scaling Law over the past six years, covering industries from smartphones to artificial intelligence computing.

This autumn, the company will launch a new Kirin smartphone chip that adopts a multilayer circuit architecture which shortens critical path wiring and improves transistor density and energy efficiency.

The announcement underscores China's push to circumvent US export restrictions that have limited domestic access to advanced lithography tools and cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing.

China is widely seen as unlikely to reach 1.4 nm capabilities through conventional fabrication alone, but a successful application of the Tau Scaling Law could offer a way to improve performance and chip density despite equipment constraints, experts said.

Huawei's projection places it on a competitive timeline with TSMC, the world's largest advanced chip foundry. TSMC currently produces chips on 2 nm technology and plans to begin mass production of its A14 (1.4 nm) process in 2028.

Beyond Huawei's internal roadmap, Chinese AI developers are increasingly turning to domestic chips. In its DeepSeek-V4 technical report, DeepSeek listed Huawei's Ascend NPU alongside Nvidia GPUs within the same hardware validation framework — the first time the company has positioned a Chinese AI chip on equal footing with Nvidia in an official document. The model has already completed inference adaptation on Huawei's Ascend platform.

Meanwhile, Kimi's recent research paper on cross-data center inference architecture has also hinted at exploring domestic chip-based token cost reduction.

As overseas advanced computing procurement tightens, the shift toward domestic AI chips is accelerating. He from Huawei said the semiconductor industry's future depends on open collaboration, adding that no single company can independently find all the answers.

"With the Tau Scaling Law, we look forward to working closely with scientists, engineers and industry partners around the world to drive the sustainable development of the semiconductor industry," she said.

Huawei's progress comes as a string of Chinese semiconductor companies are making inroads into chip supply chains, including chip materials, packaging, manufacturing processes and chipmaking equipment.

Roger Sheng, vice-president of research at Gartner, said amid mounting challenges, Chinese chip firms are showcasing their resilience and growing innovation capabilities.

Xing Ziqiang, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley, said China is making breakthroughs in technological innovation, driven by three core advantages — industrial clusters, a demographic dividend of science and engineering talent, and an ultra-large market — that are difficult for other economies to replicate.

"My colleagues estimate that by 2027 or 2028, China is expected to achieve a 50 percent localization rate in GPUs, marking a significant leap forward," Xing said.

masi@chinadaily.com.cn