The U.S. government has launched sanctions against Chinese corporations suspected of ordering chips from Taiwan's TSMC found in the artificial intelligence (AI) processor of China's largest telecommunications company, Huawei.
According to Reuters on the 20th (local time), the U.S. government plans to include Chinese corporation Sophgo in its list of sanctioned companies for reportedly cooperating with Huawei. Previously, TSMC chips were discovered in Huawei’s AI chip “Ascend 910B” multi-chip system, which was revealed to have been ordered by Sophgo, causing controversy. Sophgo, a semiconductor design company, is a subsidiary of bitcoin mining equipment supplier Bitmain.
Corporations listed on the sanctions list determined by the U.S. Department of Commerce must obtain permission from the U.S. government to trade advanced products or technologies. Huawei was placed on this list in 2019, and since then, the U.S. government has prohibited the export of chips to Huawei by U.S. corporations or corporations outside the U.S. without a separate permit starting in 2020. Sophgo claimed in October when the issue arose that it had “never conducted a transaction with Huawei, directly or indirectly.”