Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it had notified the US government that one of its chips was reportedly found in a Huawei Technologies Co (華為) product, in a possible breach of US export restrictions.
International media reports said that Canada-based research firm TechInsights recently discovered an Ascend 910B chip manufactured by TSMC while taking apart Huawei’s highest-end artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators. The Ascend 910B chip is considered the Chinese company’s most advanced AI chip.
TechInsights informed TSMC of its findings before publishing them in a report — which has yet to be released — while TSMC notified the US Department of Commerce, Reuters reported.
Photo: Bloomberg
The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for national security reasons, meaning the Shenzhen-based company is barred from doing business with TSMC and its contract chipmaking peers without a US government license.
The Taiwanese chipmaker has said it stopped all shipments to Huawei after Sept. 15, 2020, which the company reiterated when asked about the TechInsights report.
“TSMC is a law-abiding company, and we are committed to complying with all applicable rules and regulations, including applicable export controls. In compliance with the regulatory requirements, TSMC has not supplied to Huawei since mid-September 2020,” the company said in a statement yesterday. “We proactively communicated with the US Commerce Department regarding the matter in the report. We are not aware of TSMC being the subject of any investigation at this time.”
Huawei said in a statement it has not “produced any chips via TSMC after the implementation of the amendments made by the US Department of Commerce to its FDPR that target Huawei in 2020,” referring to the foreign direct product rule — a US trade restriction.
“Huawei has never launched the 910B chip,” the company said.
A commerce department spokesperson said that the agency’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which is responsible for semiconductor trade restrictions, is “aware of reporting alleging potential violations of US export controls.”
“We cannot comment on whether any investigation is ongoing,” the spokesperson said. “BIS is committed to ensuring compliance with the robust controls we have put in place related to China’s acquisition of advanced semiconductors.”
BIS officials met with TSMC executives in the middle of this month about issues relating to the chipmaker’s supply chain, including whether third-party distributors might provide China the ability to access restricted technology, said one of the people, who described the meeting as collaborative.
The meeting did not touch on the TechInsights report, the person said.
It is not clear whether Huawei had designed or placed orders for the 910B chip prior to its blacklisting. The processor was first spotted in server products as early as 2022, Washington-based think tank the Center for Security and Emerging Technology said.
It started gaining exposure in Chinese news outlets last year, although Huawei has not officially hosted a launch event.
IFlytek Co (科大訊飛) unveiled a new server product with the AI accelerator in August last year, and Baidu Inc (百度) ordered more than 1,000 910B units last year, Taipei-based research firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS