The US Department of Commerce, according to recent rumors, has demanded that the Taiwanese company TSMC stop supplying Chinese clients related to the field of AI with chips produced using 7nm and more advanced technological processes. According to new data, South Korean Samsung Electronics has joined similar restrictions regarding its Chinese customers.
Image Source: Samsung Electronics
Let us recall that a kind of catalyst for these processes was the revelations of the Canadian company TechInsights, which discovered that 7-nm chips produced by TSMC allegedly fell into the hands of the Chinese Huawei Technologies, which is under US sanctions, until recently. The supply scheme allegedly involved the use of intermediary companies from China, which allegedly ordered the required 7nm chips from TSMC for themselves.
According to Economic Daily News, South Korean Samsung Electronics was forced to notify its Chinese customers that it would stop supplying them with 7nm and more advanced products. Representatives of Samsung Electronics refused to publicly comment on these rumors. In fact, only one company left aside from these processes is capable of producing 7nm chips, but since we are talking about American Intel, it will not initially neglect the trust of the US authorities, on which it depends in terms of multi-billion subsidies.
Chinese SMIC is capable of producing 7nm products in small quantities, but the capacity at its disposal is probably loaded with orders from Huawei. In addition, SMIC has long been under US sanctions, and therefore cannot simply build up the corresponding capabilities.
The actions of Samsung and TSMC discussed above will primarily affect the Chinese developers T-Head (Alibaba), Bitmain and Cambricon, since they will lose access to services for the production of their chips using fairly advanced lithography. In this area, the dependence of Chinese industry on external suppliers will remain high for a long time.