The United States has placed the main chips export restrictions in Huawei and Chinese companies in recent years. This has reduced the access of companies to critical semiconductors.
Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty images
Taiwan has added to Huawei and SMIC from China to its commercial commercial list in a movement that aligns it even more with the commercial policy of the United States and occurs amid increasing tensions with Beijing.
The two main Chinese companies have put themselves in the “strategic list of high -tech products entities”, along with many of their international subsidiaries.
Taiwan’s current regulations require regulatory licenses before national companies can send products to the parties named in the entity list.
In a statement on its website, the Taiwan International Trade Administration said that Huawei and SMIC were among the 601 new foreign entities, in the blacklist due to their participation in the proliferation of weapons and other national security concerns.
Huawei and SMIC are also on a blacklist American trade and have been affected by Washington’s radical controls in advanced chips. Companies such as the Taiwan contractor manufacturer semiconductor manufacturing CO are already following US export restrictions.
However, the addition of Huawei and SMIC to Taiwan’s blacklist is probably aimed at reinforcing this policy and a hardening of existing lagoons, Ray Wang, a semiconductor analyst and independent technology, told CNBC.
He added that the new national export controls could also increase punishment for any potential infraction in the future.
TSMC had been involved in controversy in October last year when the Techinsights semiconductor research firm found a TSMC chip on a Huawei AI training card.
After the discovery, the United States Department of Commerce ordered TSMC to stop the access of Chinese clients to the chips used for AI services, according to a Reuters report. According to reports, TSMC could also face a fine of $ 1 billion to resolve American investigation into the matter.
Huawei has been working to create viable alternatives to the general processing units of NVIDIA used for AI. But, experts say that the company’s progress has been limited by export controls and the lack of scale and capabilities in the domestic chip ecosystem.
Even so, it is believed that Huawei acquired several million TSMC GPU trochers for their AI chips through the use of previous lagoons before being discovered, according to Paul Triolo, partner and senior vice president of China at the DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group advisory firm.
A die refers to a small piece of silicon material that serves as the basis for construction processors and contains the intricate circuits and components necessary to perform calculations.
According to Brady Wang, associate director at Counterpoint Research, while the latest export restrictions on SMIC and Huawei have a minimum direct impact on TSMC businesses, the Taiwanese government movement has “significant symbolic weight.”
“Underlines the intention of the Taiwanese government to align more closely with international efforts, particularly those led by the United States, to stop the transfer of advanced technologies,” he told CNBC.
“Other Taiwanese companies, especially smaller IC design houses or component suppliers that may have maintained indirect ties with Chinese companies such as Huawei or SMIC, could face more strict scrutiny and greater compliance obligations in the future,” he added.
The Taiwanese government offensive against exports to SMIC and Huawei also occurs in geopolitical tensions tense with continental China, which considers the island governed democratically as its own territory to be gathered by force, if necessary.
In April, the United States reaffirmed its commitment to support the existing status quo when China carried out large -scale military exercises against the island coast.
In the statements reported by the state media on Sunday, China’s main political advisor, Wang Huning, echoed Beijing’s position, asking for the promotion of national reunification with Taiwan and the opposition resolved to Taiwan’s independence.
