TSMC recently notified various Chinese customers through email that it would no longer provide these companies with chip shipments of 7nm and below technologies, 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 U.S. was indeed the driving force when it comes to forcing the Taiwanese semiconductor behemoth to halt chip supply for its overseas clients, as there is a possibility that any one of these entities could somehow be linked to Huawei.
Chip shipments to Chinese firm Sophgo were suspended after the latter’s design matched the one with Huawei
An individual familiar with the matter informed Reuters that The Department of Commerce sent a letter to TSMC imposing export restrictions on certain sophisticated chips bearing a 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 notified the Department of Commerce that one of its chips had been found in a Huawei AI processor.
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Just recently, shipments to Sophgo, a China-based chip designer, were stopped when it was discovered that the company’s silicon matched the same one found on a Huawei-branded unit. The report says that this particular Huawei chip launched in 2022, making it puzzling as to how a recent shipment could have been mixed up, but it could just be another tactic employed by U.S. authorities to stifle China’s capabilities in the semiconductor race.
Huawei has attempted to circumvent the U.S. trade ban by working closely with China’s biggest foundry, SMIC, with both entities actually witnessing some success in their self-sufficiency journey by developing the 5nm process. Unfortunately, due to the high production costs and low yields of making wafers on this lithography, thanks to the use of older-generation DUV machinery, it does not look like this architecture can be utilized on a larger scale.
Instead, Huawei could resort to using the 6nm technology for the upcoming Kirin 9100, which will likely have a better transistor count than SMIC’s 7nm variant, but it still shows that China-based companies are playing catch-up compared to other players. Huawei has attempted to poach TSMC engineers by offering them triple their current salaries to jumpstart its chipmaking ambitions, but it has yet to witness any success in this area.
News Source: Reuters