US chipmaker Nvidia Corp’s plans to sell technology to China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) would be thwarted if the US government proceeds with a proposal to further restrict shipments to the blacklisted company, a draft report by a US government contractor shows.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has been considering limiting the items it authorizes US companies to ship to telecoms equipment giant Huawei, which was added to a US trade blacklist in 2019, but which continues to receive billions of US dollars in US goods under a special plan implemented by the administration of former US president Donald Trump.
“The proposed 2023 amendment of [the US Department of Commerce’s] licensing will likely have a high economic impact on Nvidia,” a draft report seen by Reuters said, referring to the company’s “pending license value.”
Photo: Reuters
Nvidia’s plans to sell to Huawei have not been previously reported.
“The China market presents a significant opportunity for the US semiconductor industry. While we are unable to comment on any pending license requests, we work with customers and partners worldwide to comply with all applicable export controls and meet market demand,” a Nvidia spokesperson said, declining to comment on the document.
A senior US Department of State official said the document was a preliminary draft prepared by a contractor, and that the department “would not have approved of the report in its current form.”
The government “has written and contracted multiple reports on this subject, based on different contingencies, which arrive at very different conclusions,” they said.
The White House and commerce department declined to comment. Huawei did not respond to a request for comment.
The document shows the Biden administration is seeking to assess the impact on US companies of proposed Huawei policy changes before imposing rules that could crimp projected revenue streams at a time when the tech industry is already reeling.
It also provides unusual insight into the politically sensitive question of which US companies are seeking business ties to Huawei, one of Washington’s most penalized Chinese companies.
The report suggested Qualcomm Inc would likely suffer a “moderate economic impact” from the change in policy, in contrast with Huawei.
However, the loss of access to Qualcomm’s modem chips would have a bigger impact on Huawei, the report forecast, as Huawei “relies heavily on Qualcomm’s modem chips to support its smartphone offering.”
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS