TSMC might have possibly violated U.S. export bans after its chip was found in Huawei device

It looks like Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) might be in serious trouble as its chip was found inside Huawei's device. The news comes after TechInsights, a Canadian research firm, conducted a teardown of Huawei's Ascend 910B chip and found that it is using a TSMC chip within the system-on-chip (SOC).

Huawei's Ascend 910B chip is perhaps the company's most advanced chip and is also being used to train AI models. When TechInsights found TSMC's chip within the Ascend 910B, it informed TSMC about the discovery, after which TSMC also notified the U.S. Commerce Department about it.

The U.S. government had banned Huawei with conducting any business with a U.S. company in May 2019, and also placed it in a trade restriction list, which meant that other companies like TSMC should have a license by the U.S. before trading with Huawei, or any other Chinese company. This made it hard for Huawei to continue making advanced chips, and it mostly relied on China's own chip company, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC).

TSMC said in a statement that it hadn't supplied any chips to Huawei since mid-September 2020, which could mean that Huawei might have stocked the chips before the U.S. curbs came in.

There has been a significant increase in the demand for chips made by TSMC ever since the rise of artificial intelligence. Training AI models require powerful hardware, like Nvidia Blackwell chips, and the U.S. has made sure that China doesn't get access to the advanced manufacturing capabilities via its export controls.

The Department of Commerce has said that it is aware of a potential violation of the U.S. export controls but did not comment on whether an active investigation is going on or not. TSMC said that it is aware of any active investigation by U.S. authorities.

Source: Reuters

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