Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has stopped producing advanced artificial intelligence chips for Chinese companies. Financial Times. A Taiwanese semiconductor chip maker has reportedly notified its customers in China that it will stop producing artificial intelligence chips for them, especially 7-nanometer and smaller models, starting this Monday. If a Chinese company orders products in this category, they will have to go through an approval process involving the US government.
The manufacturer’s new policy may be a direct result of Huawei’s discovery used his chips in AI accelerators without his knowledge. TechInsights, a Canadian research firm, reported to the company that it had discovered that Huawei’s hardware contained products manufactured by TSMC. This was in violation of trade sanctions imposed by the US Commerce Department on Huawei in 2020, which prevented it from acquiring chips made by foreign firms. It recently revoked its licenses allowing Intel and Qualcomm to manufacture chips for its devices.
TSMC reported TechInsights’ findings to the US Department of Commerce, which is now investigating how this happened. The company has denied any business relationship with Huawei stopped selling to a customer it believed had illegally shipped its chips to a Chinese brand. The Times sources say that TSMC has decided to completely stop manufacturing AI chips for Chinese customers because it wants to show the US government that it is “not acting against US interests”. His new policy could have a major impact on the AI efforts of his Chinese clients. For example, Baidu planned to create hardware for artificial intelligence work equipped with a series of chips developed by TSMC.
