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[News] U.S. Reportedly Set to Impose New AI Chip Restrictions on China Before Christmas
Maybe one of Biden’s export restrictions with the largest scale, a new round of U.S. chip export crackdown on China has been launched last week, targeting 140 entities, led by China’s chip equipment giant Naura Technology. However, the chip war between two superpowers seems to keep escalating, as new AI regulations are likely to be released before Christmas, according to a report from Chinese media outlet icsmart.
The report suggests that the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is expected to release new AI regulations soon, which may impose further restrictions on AI chip exports to China.
According to sources cited by the report, the BIS has already submitted relevant restriction rules to the appropriate agencies for review. Based on previous experiences, the review process typically takes about a week, so the announcement is expected to come next week, likely before Christmas, as per icsmart.
Another industry source indicates that the new regulations would be “stunning.”
The icsmart report also suggests that these restrictions may be linked to TSMC’s suspension of providing 7nm and more advanced process foundry services for AI chip companies in China.
Following controversies of supplying 7nm chips to Huawei through proxies, the Taiwanese foundry leader is rumored to be requested by the U.S. to halt shipments of all its 7nm or more advanced chips to the AI/GPU clients in China, starting from November 11, according to previous reports by Financial Times and Reuters.
According to icsmart, citing rumors circulated in the industry, overseas foundries that leverage U.S. technologies, such as TSMC, will be prohibited from providing foundry services to manufacture certain Chinese chips, including products with a die size larger than 300mm² per chip, containing more than 30 billion transistors per chip, or those adopting advanced packaging and HBM and are primarily intended for AI training.
In response to the tightening U.S. export curbs, China announced on Monday that it has initiated an antitrust investigation into U.S. AI chip giant NVIDIA for alleged violations of the country’s anti-monopoly regulations.
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(Photo credit: U.S. Department of Commerce)
