The US Department of Commerce sent TSMC a letter, according to which it has imposed sanctions on sophisticated chips used in artificial intelligence accelerators and graphics processing units designed for the PRC. The US sanctions have come just weeks after TSMC notified the US Department of Commerce that a Huawei AI processor consisted of one of its chips. Tech Insights, one of the research firms, disassembled the product, finding the TSMC chip and a violation of export control.
Huawei is on a restricted trade list, requiring suppliers to get licenses to supply any of the company’s commodities. Any license, which can boost Huawei’s AI capabilities, is likely to be rejected. Moreover, TSMC suspended shipments to Sophgo, a chipmaker from the PRC, after its chip matched the one found in a Huawei AI processor.
The US Department of Commerce sent similar notifications to Nvidia and AMD in 2022, limiting their ability to export chips to the PRC, and makers of chips, including KLA, Applied Materials, and Lam Research, to limit supply of tools to the PRC for the manufacture of advanced microcircuits. The sanctions in these letters turned into rules, which apply to a wide variety of companies.
