Huawei Touts Sanctions-Busting Chip Breakthrough, SMIC Shares Erupt

Semiconductor Manufacturing International soared to a record high in China after Huawei unveiled what it described as a breakthrough pathway for advanced semiconductor production at the IEEE ISCAS conference, without relying on the West’s most advanced chipmaking equipment.

Huawei’s semiconductor chief, He Tingbo, told the audience earlier today that the company has developed a “New Semiconductor Path in Practice” that replaces traditional Moore’s Law-style geometric scaling with time scaling and reducing signal propagation delay across devices, circuits, chips, and systems.

Huawei’s press release stated:

In her speech, she presented the Tau (τ) Scaling Law, a new principle for guiding the future development of the semiconductor industry. This law proposes replacing geometric scaling with time (τ) scaling as a new guiding principle for the evolution of both semiconductors and electronic systems. Based on this principle, innovative technologies such as LogicFolding can be used to continuously compress signal propagation delay and steadily improve transistor density, which will drive the ongoing evolution of semiconductors and electronic systems.

Tingbo said Huawei plans to make 1.4-nanometer chips by 2031 using its own “LogicFolding” architecture. TSMC has said it expects to begin mass production of 1.4nm chips in 2028, leaving Huawei about five years behind the global leader, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Tingbo claims LogicFolding can boost chip performance and will be used in upcoming Kirin mobile chips expected this fall.

This comes as U.S. sanctions on advanced chipmaking equipment and high-end semiconductors have been aimed at slowing China’s push into cutting-edge chip production.

Shares of Chinese chip stocks surged, with SMIC jumping more than 18% and Hua Hong Semiconductor hitting daily limits.

The view is that this is a potential breakthrough in China’s effort to bypass U.S.-led export controls and reduce dependence on Western semiconductor equipment.

We suspect someone in the Trump team will likely weigh in on this development in the coming days, if not weeks.