Huawei uses TSMC loophole to bypass US chip ban

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chip maker, has been urged to improve its end-user checks after a 7-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chip it produced was found in a product of the heavily-sanctioned Huawei Technologies.

John Moolenaar, a Republican lawmaker in the United States and the chair of the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), described having TSMC-manufactured chips in Huawei’s AI accelerators as a “catastrophic failure of export control policy.”

“AI accelerators, like the one that these chips fueled, are at the forefront of our technology race with the CCP, and I fear the damage done here will have significant consequences for our national security,” Moolenaar said in a press release on Wednesday.

He said Congress needs immediate answers from both the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and TSMC about the scope and volume of this disaster. He called on the US government to take immediate steps to ensure this does not happen again.

On October 9, TechInsights, a Canada-based information platform for the semiconductor industry, published a report with the title “Huawei Ascend 910B AI Trainer – Die Analysis.”

TechInsights said it acquired the Huawei Atlas 300T A2 AI training card and believes it contains the Ascend 910B processor. It said the Ascend 910B, a second-generation device launched in 2022 after the launch of the original Ascend 910 in 2019, was described by the media as a 7nm chip manufactured by the Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).

Citing an unnamed Taiwanese trade and economic official, Reuters reported on Wednesday that TechInsights had informed TSMC of the chip analysis