Western chip giants could hit their limits: Huawei scientist

Huawei Technologies Co's chief semiconductor scientist has warned that Western chip giants, including Nvidia Corp, are approaching insurmountable physical limits in their pursuit of more powerful processors, in a rare public appearance that also showcased Huawei's alternative path forward.

In a marathon four-hour interview aired in late July, Liao Heng, Huawei Fellow and chief semiconductor scientist, argued that the decades-long practice of continuously shrinking transistors and packing more into integrated circuits is running out of runway. He pointed to Nvidia's strategy of building ever-larger chips with billions of transistors and increasing amounts of high-bandwidth memory (HBM).

There has to be a limit in how they scale up with ever-increasing compute die and more HBM, Liao said, adding that the industry is still pushing, but once they cross that physical limit, there will be "an avalanche".

Liao's comments reflect a widely held view that foundries like TSMC and Intel Corp may eventually hit a wall in further reducing transistor sizes. While those companies, along with Samsung Electronics, have multi-year roadmaps enabled by ASML's advanced lithography systems, Huawei – barred from accessing such equipment due to United States sanctions – has had to pursue a more creative approach.

That approach is Huawei's "Tau Scaling Law", proposed in May, which shifts focus from shrinking chip dimensions to improving transmission speeds between system components. Huawei is set to unveil its first smartphone chip designed under this framework, using a technology called LogicFolding.

Liao said the world will have a clear understanding later this year of how Huawei's alternative approach helps narrow the gap with rivals, when its new smartphone chip is dissected by industry research firms. He also likened the AI value chain to an "18-story pagoda", positioning it as a more comprehensive framework than Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's five-layer cake model.

The growing bifurcation between the US and China in semiconductor advances, Liao said, means both sides must now build their own complete manufacturing and supply capabilities.