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.
