Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company ( TSMC) reportedly broke US export regulations by producing chips for Huawei Technologies, which has been subject to sanctions from the US Commerce Department.  ,
The Commerce Department contacted TSMC on Friday to inquire whether it was providing Huawei with smartphone and artificial intelligence ( AI ) chips in a direct or indirect manner, The Information reported.  ,
A key emphasis of the research is the Kirin 9000s found inside Huawei’s Mate60 phones, which were launched in late August 2023 during US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s China vacation. The issue is whether they were shipped after the 2020 deadline for Huawei to stop supplies.
The research will also assess whether TSMC is making Huawei’s Ascend computers.
TSMC, the country’s biggest device deal company, said in a speech that it is a “law abiding business”, which is committed to complying with laws and regulations, as well as US export controls.
The company stated that “if we have any reason to believe there are possible problems,” that we will take immediate action to assure compliance, including conducting studies and actively communicating with relevant events, including users and regulatory officials, as needed.
The statement about the investigation appeared to have intact TSMC stock, which was intact. They increased 4.83 % to TW$ 1, 085 on Friday after the company announced forecast-beating third-quarter profits. The shares have gained 83 % so far this year.  ,
A Chinese tech journalist wrote an article titled” After TSMC and Huawei split upward, Huawei may achieve personal sufficiency” on October 9th. The Information’s report followed.
” A significant topic has just arisen in the technology sector. TSMC, a well known’ great brother’ in the chip-making sector, has split up with Chinese tech giant Huawei and will no more make cards for Huawei”, the poet says.
” The duo used to be very near friends,” they said. He claims that TSMC has now made the decision to leave Huawei alone and increase its purchase in the US. ” It’s possible that TSMC made some of the 5G and Ascend chips that Huawei is still using today.” When Huawei runs out of these cards, it will have to make them regionally”.
He claims that because China is prohibited from importing deep ultraviolet ( UV) or the conventional deep ultraviolet ( DUV) lithography machines, it is difficult for Chinese chipmakers to catch up with TSMC.  ,
” Actually Huawei and TSMC had had a really close collaboration. But issues have become complicated after the US intervened,” a Jiangsu-based author using the surname” Summer” says in an article published on October 15.  ,
He claims that TSMC had been begging the US to allow it to continue its partnership with Huawei for a while. Eventually, TSMC made the decision to end its assistance with Huawei by choosing to mate with Amkor Technology. ”  ,
He continues, noting that the split-up between TSMC and Huawei may not be a bad thing because both companies may look for new opportunities while Foreign chip designers will receive more agreements from Huawei.  ,
TSMC and Amkor
A non-binding primary document of words was signed by the US Commerce Department and Amkor Technology on July 26. It states that the government will grant Amkor up to US$ 400 million in proposed immediate cash under the CHIPS and Science Act.  ,
The funding will support Amkor’s investment of approximately US$ 2 billion and create 2, 000 jobs in a project in Peoria, Arizona, the Biden administration said in a statement.
According to the statement,” Companies like TSMC, Apple, and GlobalFoundries will be able to package and test their essential chips domestically, enabling the US to have a full end-to-end cycle of the chip manufacturing process.”  ,
Advanced packaging is widely believed to be the next frontier of innovation in the industry because it can drive increased power and performance as chip design approaches the technical limits of Moore’s Law, which suggests that the number of transistors on a semiconductor doubles every two years.  ,
On October 4, TSMC and Amkor signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to provide Arizona with advanced packaging and testing capabilities.  ,
The close collaboration and proximity of TSMC’s front-end fab and Amkor’s back-end facility will accelerate overall product cycle times, the two companies said in a joint press release.
According to industry analysts, the new partnership between TSMC and Amkor is a win-win situation because they can work together to win contracts, particularly in the field of AI chip manufacturing.
In Arizona, TSMC is constructing two advanced fabs. In the first half of the year, the first one will start making 4 nanometer chips. In 2028, the second will begin producing 2 and 3 nm chips. In order to produce 2nm chips in 2030, TSMC has also announced a plan to establish a third fab in Arizona.  ,
After Taiwan-based ASE Technology Holding Co Ltd., Amkor is the second-largest outsourced semiconductor assembly and test company by revenue in the world. Its major clients include Apple and automakers like Siemens.  ,
Kirin 9000 chips
Huawei and its 70 affiliates were added to the US Commerce Department’s so-called Entity List in May 2019 on national security grounds. On September 15, 2020, TSMC stopped producing Kirin chips, resulting in a countdown for HiSilicon’s chip inventory.  ,
In its most recent shipment to mainland China, some Chinese media reported that TSMC could have shipped about 30 million units of the 5nm Kirin 9000 chips.  ,
Due to having a 0 % share in the global smartphone chipset market in the third quarter of 2022, HiSilicon should have exhausted all of its stock.  ,
But last December, Huawei’s newly-launched Qingyun L540 laptop used a Kirin chip called 9006C, which was later found to be a modified Kirin 9000 chip made by TSMC in 2020. Is it still unknown whether HiSilicon has Kirin 9000 chips in stock.  ,
The Commerce Department’s latest probe is expected to check whether any of the Kirin 9000 chips in the so-called” last shipment “were delivered after the deadline of September 15, 2020.
Read: Huawei struggling to make enough chips for Mate70
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