Comment: Why Huawei Wants to Redefine Scaling "Tau" by Huawei Instead of EUV?

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Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders' Association (TMBA)

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With the scaling of semiconductor chips based on signal propagation time instead of transistor size and a (new) approach to chip stacking called "LogicFolding," Huawei CEO He Tingbo recently caused a stir at ISCAS. But what is the truth behind the claims?

Again and again, images circulate online claiming to show that China can build its own EUV machine—which would even be better than ASML's—and would therefore soon no longer suffer from the fact that ASML's EUV machines are not allowed to be introduced.

But what is actually visible in the images, no one knows. It is likely crude propaganda intended primarily to cause uncertainty.

In the meantime, the People's Republic of China apparently chooses a more sophisticated approach to mitigate the effects of the embargo. Huawei calls the approach "Tau"-Scaling, aiming to sweep Moore's Law off the table. The performance of future chip generations would no longer be defined by the two-dimensional shrinking of geometries but by the temporal dimension, the signal propagation times. Hence "Tau."

In her keynote at ISCAS 2026 (IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems) in Shanghai, He Tingbo, Director of Huawei and President of the Semiconductor Business Unit, presented the concept. She demonstrated how signal propagation times between transistors, chiplets, chips, and higher system levels could be reduced. This was not new, as semiconductor manufacturers have been working on it for decades, with optical interconnects increasingly being introduced recently.

Additionally, He Tingbo wants to move into the third dimension and stack transistor layers on top of each other. This is also not new; the same happens in HBMs. However, Huawei now claims to have achieved a technical breakthrough with an allegedly completely new approach called "Logic Folding." In my opinion, it was not clear from the presentation exactly how Logic Folding works.

Mass Production of Semiconductors without EUV Machines

But that probably doesn't matter at all. Huawei rather wants to show that chips of the latest generation can be produced, which would be more powerful in the future than the chips structured on EUV machines from ASML.

Anyone who wants to produce this way would only need to integrate into the ecosystem that Huawei aims to build. The goal is apparently to convince as many Western semiconductor manufacturers as possible to forgo expensive EUV machines and produce more cost-effectively. ASML would then be isolated, and the Western embargo would no longer affect China.

Will the propaganda succeed in actually attracting Western manufacturers with Tau-Scaling and pulling them into its own camp? I doubt it. Perhaps the propaganda machine that has started will cause temporary uncertainty, but nothing more.

One thing the keynote definitely shows: China has given up hope of being able to build something even remotely equivalent to ASML's EUV machines, at least until 2031. ASML's lead, therefore, cannot be caught up.

A miracle machine that can produce structures under 7 nm in large quantities through a brilliant technical trick is apparently also not on the horizon. So there is probably a grain of truth in all the propaganda.