A chip made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) was found on a Huawei Technologies Co artificial intelligence (AI) processor, indicating a possible breach of US export restrictions that have been in place since 2019 on sensitive tech to the Chinese firm and others. The incident has triggered significant concern in the IT industry, as it appears that proxy buyers are acting on behalf of restricted Chinese companies to bypass the US rules, which are intended to protect its national security.
Canada-based research firm TechInsights conducted a die analysis of the Huawei Ascend 910B AI Trainer, releasing its findings on Oct. 9. The device is considered to be the most advanced AI chip available from a Chinese firm. The TSMC chip was part of a multichip system, Reuters reported.
After being informed of the discovery, TSMC on Oct. 23 said that it had notified the governments in Taipei and Washington of the issue. Taiwan also has export controls to prevent advanced chips from being made in China.
TSMC said that it had stopped all shipments to Huawei as of Sept. 15, 2020, in compliance with US regulations.
Reports a few days later said that TSMC had halted shipments to Chinese chip designer Sophgo, with sources telling Reuters that Sophgo had ordered chips from TSMC that matched the one found on the Huawei device.
Sophgo has denied any wrongdoing in the case.
Sophgo was established in 2019 and is affiliated with Bitmain, a Chinese cryptoequipment company that has offices in Taiwan. Bitmain’s Taiwan operations were raided in 2021, with prosecutors accusing two Bitmain affiliates of illegally recruiting Taiwanese engineers, and illegally conducting research and development activities. Bitmain reportedly used to have a cooperative relationship with Huawei and once introduced a former Huawei executive to sit on Sophgo’s board.
Chinese IT firms have long been seeking ways to access advanced equipment and technologies from other countries. Reuters in August reported that Chinese state-linked entities had turned to Amazon.com Inc’s cloud service, among others, to access advanced US chips and AI capabilities that they could not acquire otherwise.
While providing access to such chips or advanced AI models through the cloud is not a contravention of the US regulations, experts have warned that restricted items might be transferred by proxy buyers to China, which repackages them, disguising the components as Chinese-made. TSMC, as well as authorities in Taiwan and the US, must see the Ascend 910B incident as a warning about the reality of proxy buyers and the implications for national security. All three must carefully investigate how the TSMC chip ended up in Huawei’s possession.
TSMC founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) last month warned that the company is facing its most severe challenge, as “free trade of semiconductors has died.”
US Representative John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the US and the Chinese Communist Party, called the Huawei incident “a catastrophic failure” of US export control policies.
As a world-leading chipmaker with its hands full supplying international orders, TSMC would not want to risk its reputation and market access by flouting US regulations to sell chips to banned Chinese firms.
TSMC needs to enhance its mechanisms to spot suspect orders and monitor how its products are dispersed, especially as it builds more fabs outside Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the governments in Taipei and Washington, with TSMC’s cooperation, should fix policy loopholes to further safeguard the countries’ high-end technologies and industries.
Punishing the world’s No. 1 chipmaker would only weaken the IT capacity of democratic states while benefiting those of authoritarians.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS