TSMC recently informed various Chinese customers by email that it would no longer supply these companies with shipments of 7nm and lower technology chips, and given that Donald Trump recently won the presidential election, we doubt that these two events are mere coincidences. According to the latest report, the United States was indeed the driving force when it came to forcing the Taiwanese semiconductor giant to suspend the supply of chips to its foreign customers, as it is possible that the one of these entities is linked in some way to Huawei.
Chip shipments to Chinese company Sophgo suspended after latter’s design matches Huawei’s
A person familiar with the matter informed Reuters that the Commerce Department sent a letter to TSMC imposing export restrictions on certain sophisticated chips carrying lithography of 7nm and below. These semiconductors were to be sold to Chinese customers and would be leveraged for AI accelerators and GPUs. These trade restrictions came just a week after TSMC informed the Commerce Department that one of its chips had been found in a Huawei AI processor.
Just recently, shipments to Sophgo, a China-based chip designer, were halted when it was discovered that the company’s silicon matched that found on a Huawei-branded unit. The report states that this particular Huawei chip was released in 2022, making it perplexing as to how a recent shipment could have been mixed up, but it could just be another tactic employed by US authorities to cover up China’s capabilities in the semiconductor race.
Huawei attempted to circumvent the US trade ban by working closely with China’s largest foundry, SMIC, with both entities actually enjoying some success in their journey to self-sufficiency in develop the 5nm process. Unfortunately, due to the high production costs and low wafer manufacturing yields on this lithography, thanks to the use of older generation DUV machines, it does not appear that this architecture can be used on a larger scale.
Instead, Huawei could resort to using 6nm technology for the upcoming Kirin 9100, which will likely have a better transistor count than the 7nm SMIC variant, but it still shows that China-based companies are catching up with other players. Huawei tried to poach TSMC engineers by offering them triple their current salary to revive its chipmaking ambitions, but it has yet to see success in that area.
Source d’information : Reuters
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