Huawei Challenges US Sanctions with Unconventional Plan to Produce 1.4 Nanometer Chips

SadaNews - Huawei has revealed a new and unconventional strategy to develop advanced processors for its devices, in an attempt to overcome US restrictions that have deprived the company of access to the latest chip manufacturing technologies for years.

Since being placed on the US blacklist in 2019, Huawei has been prevented from accessing US supply chains, and in the following year, Washington intensified the pressure by implementing the "direct foreign product" rule, which prohibits global factories from producing advanced chips for Huawei if they rely on US equipment or software.

These restrictions directly impacted Huawei's ambitions in the processor field, as the largest chip manufacturers in the world, such as TSMC and Samsung, depend on advanced US technologies and equipment to produce modern processors with a high density of transistors, which offer stronger performance and better energy efficiency, according to a report published by PhoneArena, which was reviewed by Al Arabiya Business.

To temporarily overcome the sanctions, Huawei had previously obtained modified versions of Qualcomm chips that only operate on fourth-generation technologies and used them in a number of its flagship phones, such as the Huawei P50 series, Huawei Mate 50, and Huawei P60 Pro.

However, the company wanted to regain support for fifth-generation networks in its flagship phones, which led it to develop a new Kirin chip in collaboration with SMIC, the largest chip manufacturer in China.

Nevertheless, US sanctions have prevented SMIC from obtaining advanced EUV lithography equipment, which is the key technology for producing modern chips with advanced manufacturing precision.

Due to this ban, the company had to rely on older DUV equipment while using multi-patterning technology to compensate for the gap, which allowed Huawei to produce a 7-nanometer chip for the Huawei Mate 60 Pro in 2023, while Apple was using the A17 Pro chip with a 3-nanometer process in the iPhone 15 Pro.

Today, Huawei says it is aiming to change the game entirely. Instead of only focusing on shrinking transistor sizes as traditional companies do, the company plans to increase chip performance by improving the internal design of the electronic engineering itself.

According to Huawei, the new approach will enable it, by 2031, to develop chips with transistor densities equivalent to 1.4-nanometer chips, although it will not necessarily use the same manufacturing technologies available to competitors.

The company presented this concept during the 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems held in Shanghai, through a speech delivered by He Tingbo, head of Huawei's semiconductor sector.

The idea is based on what the company calls the "Tau Scaling Law," a method aimed at reducing the time it takes for signals and data to move within chips and computing systems, thereby increasing performance without the need to significantly reduce transistor sizes.

Huawei confirmed that it has already used this concept over the past six years in more than 381 chips designated for smartphones and artificial intelligence systems.

Moreover, it intends to start using a new architecture named "LogicFolding" starting next fall, which is a technology that shortens the interconnection paths within processors to enhance performance and efficiency.

Although Huawei has previously tried to develop advanced lithography printing equipment of its own to bypass US sanctions, it has not made significant progress in this area as of yet.

Therefore, it seems that the "Tau Scaling" strategy may represent the best opportunity for the company to catch up with chip industry giants in the coming years.