Some Chinese artificial intelligence chip companies are now designing less powerful processors to maintain access to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s production. (TSMC), despite U.S. sanctions, four people with knowledge of the matter said.
Aiming to hinder breakthroughs in AI and supercomputing by the Chinese military, Washington has imposed a series of export controls on highly advanced processors from companies like Nvidia and on chip manufacturing equipment. These restrictions also prevent TSMC — which uses U.S. chipmaking tools — and other foreign chipmakers from taking orders to produce them.
The latest round of US export controls imposed last October has exposed how limited China’s advanced chip manufacturing capacity is and how dependent Chinese AI chip design companies are on TSMC – the world’s largest chip contract manufacturer, the sources said.
