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ToggleHe Tingbo, Director of Huawei and President of its Semiconductor Business Unit, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Exploring and Practicing New Paths in Semiconductors" at the 2026 International Circuits and Systems Symposium (ISCAS 2026) held in Shanghai on the 25th, formally proposing the "Tao (τ) Law". This is the first time that China has independently proposed a new principle to guide the development of the industry in the global semiconductor field, marking a new direction for China's chip technology path from catching up with geometric miniaturization to systematic latency compression.
According to a report by Jinse Finance citing People's Daily, the core concept of "Tao Law" is to replace the "geometric shrinkage" that the semiconductor industry has followed for decades with "time shrinkage". The goal is to systematically reduce the time constant (Tao τ) and continuously compress signal propagation latency through innovative technologies such as logic folding, thereby continuously increasing transistor density and realizing the sustainable evolution of semiconductors and electronic systems.
381 chips in six years, from theory to mass production
In his speech, He Tingbo pointed out that based on this new principle, Huawei has successfully designed and mass-produced 381 chips in the past six years, covering multiple fields from terminal devices to infrastructure. These figures not only demonstrate Huawei's resilience in maintaining its chip self-development capabilities under the pressure of US sanctions, but also reflect that the "Tao Law" has been initially verified in actual product iterations.
These 381 chips cover Huawei's HiSilicon product line, including the Ascend AI accelerator chip, the Kunpeng server processor, and the Kirin mobile chip series. Against the backdrop of continued tightening of US export controls, Huawei is gradually building a non-US chip design and production chain, and "Tao's Law" is the technical theoretical basis for this strategy.
The Kirin chip will fully adopt logic folding for the first time this fall.
He Tingbo also announced that Huawei will release a new generation of Kirin mobile phone chips this fall, which will fully adopt logic folding technology to significantly improve related performance. Logic folding technology is one of the important practical methods of "Tao's Law". By reorganizing the layout and interconnection structure of the internal logic units of the chip, it can optimize performance and power consumption without relying on advanced process miniaturization.
It's worth noting that this means the new Kirin chip may no longer rely on the most advanced nanometer-level processes (such as 3 nanometers or below), but instead compensate for process limitations through chip architecture innovation. This has profound implications for the global semiconductor industry landscape—if logic folding technology can be mass-produced and verified, it will open up a new technological path for chip designers who are constrained by export controls on equipment such as EUV exposure machines.
Multi-level collaborative optimization system and 2031 goals
"Tao's Law" constructs a multi-level collaborative optimization system that spans components, circuits, chips, and systems. Unlike the traditional Moore's Law, which simply pursues the reduction of transistor linewidth, "Tao's Law" starts from the perspective of system-level time constants and seeks cross-level delay optimization.
He Tingbo predicts that by 2031, the transistor density of high-order chips based on this law will reach the same level as that of 1.4-nanometer processes. This demonstrates Huawei's long-term confidence in this technology roadmap and sets a clear technological milestone for chip R&D over the next five years.
The Naming of "Tao's Law" and Its Strategic Implications for China's Semiconductor Industry
The character "韬" is directly taken from He Tingbo's name, and also implies strategy and planning in the phrase "文韬武略" (literary and military strategy). The Greek letter τ (tau) is often used in physics to represent the time constant, echoing the principle of time delay compression as the core of the law.
This naming convention is similar to Moore's Law, which is named after its founder, Gordon Moore, highlighting Huawei's and even China's semiconductor industry's intention to establish independent technological discourse power. In the current context of global chip supply chain restructuring and ongoing Sino-US technological competition, the proposal of "Tao's Law" is not only a technological declaration but also carries symbolic significance for industrial policy and national strategy.
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