A Canadian research company has discovered that Huawei’s multi-chiplet artificial intelligence (AI) processor “Ascend 910B” contains a die manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). highlighted potential loopholes in sanctions and China’s persistent efforts to gain access to advanced foundries. According to analysts,
“The US’s long-term sanctions against China’s semiconductor sector have proven to be full of holes,” said Alisa Liu, a researcher and director of the Taiwan Economic Research Institute.
The discovery sparked a scramble to explain what happened. TSMC has stopped shipping to an unnamed customer after it was discovered that one of the chips it had supplied to the customer was embedded in a Huawei product, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The chipmaker also notified the U.S. government and Taiwanese authorities about the incident, which could be a violation of U.S. export regulations, Taiwan’s official media said.
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TSMC logo outside a facility in Taichung, Taiwan, December 2, 2019. Photo: Shutterstock alt=TSMC logo outside a facility in Taichung, Taiwan, December 2, 2019. Photo: Shutterstock>
TSMC said in an earlier statement that it has not supplied chips to Huawei since September 2020. Huawei said it is “not producing any chips through TSMC after the implementation of the amendments made by the US Department of Commerce.” [foreign direct product rule] Targeted Huawei in 2020.”
For now, there are more questions than answers. The duration, scale and scope of the suspected client’s cooperation with TSMC remains unclear. The customer’s relationship with Huawei and its relationship with Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturers is also unclear. It is unclear whether the TSMC die discovered by TechInsights entered Huawei hardware through the same customer.
Whether Huawei had direct access to TSMC’s advanced foundry capabilities or through an indirect agency, this is a sign that strict U.S. semiconductor regulations targeted at China’s national champion are being violated. say analysts.
TechInsights’ findings have received little coverage in official Chinese media, although several social media accounts have translated and cited foreign media reports.
Huawei’s Ascend chip has become China’s premier AI-focused semiconductor and is now central to the country’s push for self-sufficiency. As of this year, the Ascend ecosystem includes 40 hardware partners, 1,600 software partners, and 2,900 AI application solutions, according to Huawei.
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Huawei first released its Ascend 910 chip in 2019, four months after the company was added to the U.S. trade blacklist, and has kept its features secret ever since. The company never officially released the 910B. Instead, the product appeared unannounced on the mainland in 2023 and quickly became the most popular alternative to Nvidia products.
A Huawei executive said at a forum in June this year that the 910B chip is on par with Nvidia’s A100, one of the most popular graphics processing units in the AI industry. When it comes to training large-scale AI models, there is “no big difference” in the computing power performance of the 910B and Nvidia A100, Wang Tao, chief operating officer of Jiangsu Kunpeng Ecosystem Innovation Center, said at the time.
However, important information about the 910B, such as production scale and manufacturer, remains private. Industry sources earlier told the Post that Huawei has begun shipping third-generation 910C chips to a limited group of key customers for testing and configuration.
Industry insiders say the incident suggests China still faces difficulties in manufacturing advanced chips and is unable to do so without foreign technology and tools, such as Dutch supplier ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment. This suggests that it remains extremely difficult for China to make progress in this area, he said.
Huawei surprised the market last year by launching a smartphone equipped with a 7-nanometer chip, but a subsequent TechInsights teardown report revealed that the chip was manufactured by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. It turned out. The Mate 60 Pro marks Huawei’s return to the 5G handset market, and patriotic fervor has spurred sales of the device and its next flagship, the Pura 70.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative news organization on China and Asia for more than a century. For more stories from SCMP, explore the SCMP app or visit SCMP on Facebook. Twitter page. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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