A female Huawei executive has gone viral.
A milestone moment.
On May 25th, He Tingbo, a director of Huawei and the president of the Semiconductor Business Unit, officially proposed the "Tao (τ) Law". This is the first time China has put forward a new principle to guide the development of the global semiconductor industry, which quickly went viral.
The capital market immediately responded. On that day, the semiconductor sector of A-shares collectively exploded. The Sci - Tech Innovation 50 Index hit a new all - time high, and a number of semiconductor stocks rose significantly. The market trend spread to the Hong Kong stock market. As of the mid - day trading today, the semiconductor sector in Hong Kong ranked first in terms of gains.
In the Chinese semiconductor industry, He Tingbo is not an unfamiliar name. She is one of the founders of Huawei HiSilicon and has long led Huawei's chip R & D and strategy. Remember in 2019, He Tingbo wrote that famous letter to all employees of HiSilicon, with every word inspiring.
Seven years later, she stepped onto the stage again, leaving a new footnote in the history of Chinese chips.
Her reappearance: The growth history of Huawei's "Chip Queen"
He Tingbo stepped into the spotlight.
Yesterday, at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems ISCAS 2026, He Tingbo delivered a keynote speech and officially proposed the "Tao (τ) Law". This speech quickly went viral, and also made this key figure who has long been hidden behind Huawei's chip system be seen by the outside world again.
Born in 1969, He Tingbo is from Changsha, Hunan. She graduated from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, with double bachelor's and master's degrees in semiconductor physics and communication engineering. In 1996, she joined Huawei and has since been deeply involved in chip R & D and strategy. She has held various positions in the chip business (development, research, architecture, supply chain), served as the R & D minister, the president of HiSilicon, and the president of the 2012 Laboratory. Now she serves as the director of the Huawei Scientists Committee, the director of ITMT, and the president of the Semiconductor Business Unit.
She was truly remembered by the outside world starting from that long - term chip breakthrough.
According to Global People magazine, as early as 2003, Ren Zhengfei was determined to develop chips. He found He Tingbo, who was emerging at Huawei at that time, and told her, "Huawei develops chips so that we can have a backup system when others cut off our supply."
The next year, HiSilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei, was established. Ren Zhengfei allocated a large amount of resources to He Tingbo, including 20,000 people and an annual budget of $400 million. However, chip R & D has never been an easy path. Later, HiSilicon successively released several chips, but the initial results were not ideal.
He Tingbo once recalled that Ren Zhengfei was also very anxious at that time, but his reaction was not "stop spending this money", but "it must be spent". It was precisely because of this sense of mission that a series of Kirin chips were later launched.
Many people got to know He Tingbo starting from that early morning in 2019.
Facing that storm, He Tingbo, the then president of Huawei HiSilicon, issued a famous internal letter to all employees, announcing that all the "spare tire" chips developed for the company's survival in the past decade were officially put into use. This move ensured the continuous supply and strategic security of most of Huawei's products.
One sentence in the letter was repeatedly quoted later: "Today, this darkest day is the day when every ordinary HiSilicon employee becomes a hero of the era." He Tingbo wrote in the letter, "In the future, there won't be another decade to build spare tires and then replace them. The buffer zone has disappeared. From the moment a new product is born, it must have a 'technological self - reliance' plan."
"Only in the face of huge waves can the true nature of heroes be revealed, and only through hardships can the Noah's Ark be built." Seven years have passed, and these words still ring true. Now, what she brings is a new proposition: When Moore's Law is approaching its limit, the Chinese semiconductor industry needs to find another way.
What is the Tao (τ) Law?
On the day of the speech, the paper "A Time Scaling Theory for Multi - Layer Electronic Systems" signed by He Tingbo was submitted to the pre - publication platform of scientific and technological papers of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which detailed the relevant technologies and progress.
To put it simply, in the past half - century, the progress of the semiconductor industry has mainly relied on Moore's Law, which means continuously making transistors smaller and stuffing more components into the same area to improve chip performance. 14 nanometers, 7 nanometers, and 3 nanometers are all results under the "geometric miniaturization" path.
However, this path is becoming increasingly difficult.
As the process approaches the physical limit, the difficulty of further reducing the size of transistors has increased sharply, and the R & D and manufacturing costs are also rising rapidly. At the same time, the demand for computing power in fields such as AI, high - performance computing, and smartphones is still growing exponentially. How to continue to improve chip performance after the slowdown of the traditional process dividend has become a common problem faced by the global semiconductor industry.
The "Tao (τ) Law" was proposed in this context.
"Tao" corresponds to the Greek letter τ, which represents the time constant in circuit theory. A smaller τ means faster signal switching and transmission. Different from Moore's Law, which emphasizes "geometric miniaturization", the Tao (τ) Law emphasizes "time miniaturization" - by systematically reducing the time constant, it compresses the delay of signal transmission inside the chip, thereby improving the overall performance of semiconductor and electronic systems.
To this end, Huawei has innovatively proposed core technologies such as "Logic Folding" and built a multi - level collaborative optimization system that runs through devices, circuits, chips, and system levels. This system aims to systematically reduce the time constant τ and drive the continuous improvement of performance, energy efficiency, and transistor density at all levels.
The paper presented two verification cases at the mass - production level: In the field of mobile SoCs, the logic folding technology achieved a 55% step - up increase in transistor density and a 41% energy - efficiency gain at the same device node;
In the field of AI systems, the collaborative design technology stack composed of a unified memory semantic bus architecture, near - package Hi - ONE optical I/O, and edge - to - surface 3D folding technology is expected to achieve more than a 100 - fold increase in hardware integration by 2035.
It is reported that in the past six years of practice, based on the Tao (τ) Law, Huawei has successfully designed and mass - produced 381 chips, widely covering the needs of various industries. Among them, the Kirin chip to be launched this autumn will adopt the logic folding technology for the first time, with significantly improved performance. It is expected that by 2031, the transistor density of high - end chips based on the Tao (τ) Law will reach the same level as that of the 1.4 - nanometer process.
This means that the "Tao (τ) Law" is not just a theoretical concept, but a systematic summary of Huawei's years of practice in fields such as mobile phone chips and AI computing. It points to a more practical problem: When Moore's Law is approaching its limit, the semiconductor industry needs a new evolution path.
Facing the future, He Tingbo said, "The future definitely belongs to open cooperation. In the path of semiconductor evolution, no single enterprise can find all the answers alone. Under the path of the Tao (τ) Law, we look forward to closely collaborating with global scientists, engineers, and industry partners to jointly promote the continuous development of the semiconductor and electronic industries."
The Semiconductor Breakthrough Battle
The market immediately responded to such a scene.
On that day, the semiconductor industry sector of A - shares witnessed an epic explosion. The China Semiconductor Chip Index rose 6.95% in a single day, and the Sci - Tech Innovation 50 Index soared 5.88% simultaneously, both hitting new all - time highs.
Among them, SMIC once touched the daily limit during intraday trading, and its stock price hit a new all - time high. Its trading volume throughout the day ranked among the top in A - shares; Huahong Company hit the daily limit in the afternoon, and its stock price broke through the 200 - yuan mark; Cambricon continued to strengthen, and its total market value once approached 900 billion yuan.
The semiconductor boom was thus ignited. Although the market declined later, looking at the long - term, this round of market trend reflects more than just a simple rotation of sectors.
In the past few years, the Chinese semiconductor industry has always been on a difficult but correct path. On the one hand, key technological breakthroughs have been made successively in advanced processes, key equipment, and materials; on the other hand, the demand for chips and computing power has been continuously driven up by AI large models, smart cars, robots, and consumer electronics.
The deeper change lies in the changing dimension of industrial competition. In the past, when talking about chips, the most important thing was the process node; but when Moore's Law slows down, architecture, packaging, software - hardware collaboration, and system - level optimization have begun to become new breakthrough points. In other words, the market is not just re - pricing several companies and a few sub - sectors, but the long - term value of the Chinese semiconductor industry in the new technological cycle.
This is also the reason why the market sentiment was quickly ignited. The industrial breakthrough cannot rely on just one path. The real opportunities may lie in more complex system engineering capabilities.
Of course, the enthusiasm of the capital market still needs to be verified by time. Whether the new technological path can become the mainstream paradigm in the post - Moore era still needs long - term testing by the industrial chain and the market.
But at least today, a signal is clear enough: The Chinese semiconductor industry is moving from single - point breakthroughs to more systematic and engineering - oriented long - term breakthroughs.
Who will be created by the next wave? Everyone is waiting for the answer.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Investment World" (ID: pedaily2012), author: Wang Lu, published by 36Kr with authorization.