New US sanctions aim to limit China’s access to high-speed memory like HBM

Conditional concessions for US allies regarding the ability to supply chip production equipment to China should not mislead ordinary people. As Bloomberg notes, American authorities intend to limit Chinese companies’ access to HBM family memory chips and equipment for their production. The new rules will come into force next month.

Image Source: AMD

Not only the American company Micron Technology, but also the South Korean memory manufacturers Samsung Electronics and SK hynix will be forced to submit to these restrictions. According to Bloomberg, the new export control rules in their draft form will cover not only HBM2, HBM3 and HBM3E chips, but also the equipment for their production. This will have virtually no direct impact on Micron’s business, since the company refused to supply its HBM chips to China after local authorities imposed sanctions against it in 2023. Let us recall that the Chinese authorities have prohibited Chinese companies from using any products in critical digital infrastructure facilities.

The mechanisms of influence on South Korean memory suppliers have not yet been determined, but the US authorities have several legally sound ways to prohibit SK hynix and Samsung from supplying HBM memory to Chinese customers. At the very least, Korean manufacturers depend on software to design memory, which they then supply to China. This gives the United States the right to influence the supply of this type of product from South Korean companies to the territory of the Middle Kingdom. It is still difficult to understand how the new restrictions will affect the ability of Nvidia to supply its H20 accelerators adapted to the requirements of American export control regulations, since they are equipped with HBM3 memory chips.

One of the goals of the new restrictions should be to deprive the Chinese company CXMT of the ability to produce HBM2 memory. According to some reports, the company has purchased everything necessary for this equipment and is gradually improving the related technologies. In addition, Chinese developers of computing accelerators should lose access to foreign-made HBM memory chips. All this will allow, according to the US authorities, to curb the pace of development of Chinese artificial intelligence systems.