TSMC suspended shipments to China firm after chip found on Huawei processor, sources say
TSMC suspended shipments to China firm after chip found on Huawei processor, sources say
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company suspended shipments to China-based chip designer Sophgo after a chip it made was found on a Huawei AI processor, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Sophgo had ordered chips from TSMC that matched the one found on Huawei's Ascend 910B, the people said. Huawei is restricted from buying the technology to protect U.S. national security. Reuters could not determine how the chip ended up on the Huawei product.
Tech research firm TechInsights discovered the TSMC chip on Huawei's Ascend 910B when it took apart the multi-chip processor, a different source told Reuters on Tuesday. Alerted to the finding, about two weeks ago TSMC notified the U.S., the source said.
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Reuters could not determine how the chip ended up on the Huawei product.
Try to make an educated guess..
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Reuters so not do that
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Duct tape?
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B-b-but China said all their chips are self made and that sanctions only accelerate their technological progress. You mean they got caught lying through their teeth again?
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Huawei stated no such thing. Huawei is also not "China" no matter how much US corporations want to make you believe it is so you can continue to buy NSA backed doored US designed products.
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Huawei stated no such thing. Huawei is also not "China" no matter how much US corporations want to make you believe it is so you can continue to buy NSA backed doored US designed products.
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How do US restrictions factor in here? TSMC is a Taiwanese company with only one operational plant in the US, the majority are in Taiwan, China, and Japan.
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The US is the primary military force protecting Taiwan, by treaty. That's likely why.
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And The US is A very big market and TSMC exports a lot of chips into the US.
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They could ignore sanctions but that would mean they’d be sanctioned as well. Pretty much every manufacturer and financial institution has to obey laws in multiple jurisdictions if they want to operate within those markets.
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Your friend knows a secret recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies. Your mother owns the best ovens in town.
Your friend cuts a deal with your mother to use her oven exclusively. Your mother agrees knowing she’ll get to charge your friend every time they use the ovens.
This is like that. The main value is in the design (recipe). Modern foundry’s are also complex and difficult to operate affordably, but they exist all over the planet. It’s ultimately the partnerships that makes it all possible.
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Not all foundries are the same. Taiwan is leading the way for quite a long time.
There's a lot of money in both intellectual property and physical manufacturing. Trying to do an analogy with software is unfair because in software most of the costs is labor, and once the first copy is made you can make and sell as many extra copies as you want. Physical manufacturing needs machine maintenance, and expensive materials in this case.
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There is likely a lot of US tech in that chip. TSMC is just a fab, they don't have a lot of their own technology, they buy thousands of pieces of tech from all over the world to make their chips. A lot of that comes from the US.
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Countries willing to pass on a US patent to China stop getting the chips (or, in this case, chip-making jobs, realistically, but that still hurts)
Also Taiwan doesn't wanna help China and even if a US sanction was just an excuse to hurt China and get away with it they'd probably do it.
Edit: in this case, this chip is "foreign-produced items [...] that are the direct product of U.S. technology or software", according to the article. I feel it was implied but clarity is always good. US technology, used with permission in a Taiwanese good, and that permission could be retracted.
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US law permits US control over any company in the world that uses US technology.
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US legal mechanisms for internationally enforcing US law are not like domestic enforcement mechanisms. The scenarios that the pro-China folks here are talking about involve a (completely unrealistic) switch in Taiwanese allegiance, that would make US economic enforcement less relevant, and US military enforcement a serious international risk.
There are just a lot of tankies commenting, and you have to be able to interpret their logic.
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The Chinese government lying through its teeth? You don't say
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When I read "processor" in this context, I'm usually thinking of a discrete component. Wat?
I could understand being surprised to find a certain processor in a chip, but how y'all fitting chips in processors? I'm guessing that this is just another tech "journalism" failure.
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https://asiatimes.com/2024/10/huawei-uses-tsmc-loophole-to-bypass-us-chip-ban/
There's a semi-realistic graphic in that article. You can see multiple components in one package.
Besides, CPUs have had integrated GPUs for years now. I'm not sure why you'd be surprised to hear about separate multiple processor chips inside one big processor package.
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