Huawei’s ‘Chip Queen’ Throws Down the Gauntlet

华为“芯片女王”下战书

The plot thickens in the great AI chip race. Tingbo He, president of Huawei’s chip-design subsidiary HiSilicon, says her company’s engineers have developed a novel way to optimize semiconductors—and she believes it will close the performance gap between Chinese and Western chips over the next few years. 人工智能芯片竞赛的剧情愈发扑朔迷离。华为芯片设计子公司海思半导体总裁何庭波表示，公司工程师已经开发出一种优化半导体的新方法，她相信这将能在未来几年内缩小中国芯片与西方芯片之间的性能差距。

Huawei’s method, in short, focuses on speeding up computations across chips, circuits, and entire computing systems, rather than squeezing ever-more components onto a single piece of silicon. 简而言之，华为的方法侧重于加速芯片、电路和整个计算系统中的运算速度，而不是仅仅在单块硅片上堆叠更多的组件。

“We found a new path,” He said at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Shanghai last weekend. He, who is known in China as Huawei’s “chip queen,” promised that the company would prove the viability of the new approach, presumably with a new chip, in the coming months. “我们找到了一条新路径，”何庭波在上周末于上海举行的 IEEE 电路与系统国际研讨会上说道。在中国被称为华为“芯片女王”的何庭波承诺，公司将在未来几个月内通过一款新芯片来证明这一新方法的有效性。

“Before winter 2026, we will bring the surprise,” He said. “Not saturation, not continuation, but a big leap ahead.” “在 2026 年冬天之前，我们将带来惊喜，”何庭波说，“不是饱和，不是延续，而是一次巨大的飞跃。”

The chip queen calls the new approach Tau’s Scaling Law, and says it has replaced Moore’s Law as HiSilicon’s guiding principle. Moore’s Law, named for the Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, dictates that progress in computing depends on roughly doubling the number of transistors, or logic gates, packed into a chip every two years. 这位“芯片女王”将这种新方法称为“Tau 缩放定律”（Tau’s Scaling Law），并表示它已取代摩尔定律，成为海思半导体的指导原则。摩尔定律以英特尔联合创始人戈登·摩尔的名字命名，该定律认为计算能力的进步取决于每两年将芯片中集成的晶体管或逻辑门数量增加一倍。

Minting cutting-edge chips currently involves etching components into silicon using billion-dollar lithographic equipment, a supply chain of exquisitely delicate components, and extensive engineering know-how. 制造尖端芯片目前需要使用价值数十亿美元的光刻设备将组件蚀刻到硅片上，这涉及极其精密的组件供应链以及深厚的工程技术积累。

US export controls prohibit Huawei from working with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s leading chip foundry. Huawei must instead rely on China’s SMIC, which uses an older generation of lithography machines. Crucially, restrictions limit China’s ability to develop frontier artificial intelligence using its own silicon. By some estimates, it’s more than five years behind the leading edge. 美国的出口管制禁止华为与全球领先的芯片代工厂台积电（TSMC）合作。华为不得不转而依赖中国的中芯国际（SMIC），而后者使用的是上一代的光刻机。至关重要的是，这些限制措施削弱了中国利用自主芯片开发前沿人工智能的能力。据一些估计，中国在这一领域落后于世界领先水平五年以上。

But the chip industry has begun running into the limits of Moore’s Law. When transistors are just a few nanometers wide, quantum effects interfere with their normal functioning. Many chips are already made with workarounds: Apple’s most powerful processors, for example, are built by stitching two chips together to make a more powerful single one. 然而，芯片行业已经开始触及摩尔定律的极限。当晶体管宽度仅为几纳米时，量子效应会干扰其正常功能。许多芯片已经在采用变通方案：例如，苹果最强大的处理器就是通过将两块芯片拼接在一起，从而构建出一块更强大的芯片。

Huawei’s announcement suggests that the company believes it has found a way around these limits. It also suggests that the sanctions aimed at kneecapping China’s chip industry have spurred innovations that may, over time, allow the country to build a more advanced domestic chip industry and compete with the West. In the end, innovations from companies like Huawei could erode America’s technological edge. 华为的声明表明，该公司认为已经找到了绕过这些限制的方法。这也暗示，旨在遏制中国芯片行业的制裁反而激发了创新，随着时间的推移，这可能使中国能够建立更先进的本土芯片产业，并与西方竞争。最终，像华为这样的公司所带来的创新可能会削弱美国的科技优势。

“Six years ago geometric scaling plateaued for us,” He said over the weekend, referring to lithographic miniaturization. “We soon realized semiconductor evolution is more than geometric scaling.” “六年前，几何缩放对我们来说已经触及瓶颈，”何庭波在上周末提到光刻微缩技术时表示，“我们很快意识到，半导体的演进不仅仅是几何缩放。”

She highlighted several ways that the company has advanced chip performance using its new approach. These include something called LogicFolding, which reduces the time required to perform key logical operations within a circuit. 她强调了公司利用新方法提升芯片性能的几种方式。其中包括一种名为“逻辑折叠”（LogicFolding）的技术，它减少了在电路内执行关键逻辑运算所需的时间。

HiSilicon says it’s also improving chip performance by accounting for nanoscale electronic phenomena; designing chips to work well together; and developing interconnects that speed chip-to-chip communication, a key trick for training large AI models. 海思半导体表示，他们还通过考虑纳米级电子现象、设计协同工作的芯片，以及开发加速芯片间通信的互连技术来提升性能，这是训练大型 AI 模型的一项关键技术。

“For both [AI] training and inference, the win is not just in shortening compute time. It is in shortening the time that data spends moving, between chips and inside a chip,” she said. “对于（人工智能）训练和推理而言，获胜的关键不仅仅在于缩短计算时间，还在于缩短数据在芯片之间以及芯片内部移动的时间，”她说。

Huawei says it will use its new approach to produce components with performance equivalent to a 1.4-nanometer chipmaking process by 2031. This would amount to a significant reduction in China’s chipmaking lag since TSMC is expected to introduce chips using this process in 2028. 华为表示，到 2031 年，将利用其新方法生产出性能相当于 1.4 纳米工艺的组件。这将显著缩小中国在芯片制造方面的差距，因为台积电预计将在 2028 年引入该工艺。

He’s announcement doesn’t mean that Huawei has a clear path to defeating US sanctions, and not everyone is convinced it will be viable. Lennart Heim, an independent semiconductor and AI policy analyst, says Huawei’s strategy suggests the company is running into limits on how much more performance it can squeeze out by shrinking and densifying chips alone. Instead, he says, Huawei is increasingly relying on techniques like hybrid bonding and 3D chip stacking to improve performance. 何庭波的声明并不意味着华为已经有了击败美国制裁的明确路径，也不是所有人都相信该方案可行。独立半导体和人工智能政策分析师伦纳特·海姆（Lennart Heim）表示，华为的策略表明，该公司正面临仅靠缩小和加密芯片所能提升的性能极限。他认为，华为正越来越多地依赖混合键合和 3D 芯片堆叠等技术来提升性能。

But the chip queen seems confident that the company will change the game. “These innovations will enter mass production,” she said in her speech. “Maybe not this year, but from 2027 and beyond.” 但这位“芯片女王”似乎对公司改变游戏规则充满信心。“这些创新将进入大规模生产，”她在演讲中说道，“也许不是今年，但从 2027 年开始。”