US expands restrictions on chip exports to China and revises sanction rules

[Emily]

https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20221011VL200/us-china-trade-war.html
US expands restrictions on chip exports to China and revises sanction rules

Judy Lin, DIGITIMES Asia, Taipei
Tuesday 11 October 2022
The US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has announced that it is implementing a series of targeted updates to its export controls to restrict China's ability to both purchase and manufacture certain high-end chips used in military applications.

The new rules also restrict US persons from supporting the development or production in China-located facilities without a license. And experts said all major chip equipment manufacturers will be impacted by the new rules.

The export controls announced in the two rules restrict the PRC's ability to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors used by China to produce advanced military systems including weapons of mass destruction. Advanced chips are also used by China to improve the speed and accuracy of its military decision making, planning, and logistics, as well as of its autonomous military systems, and commit human rights abuses, said BIS...

 

[Emily]

Seems an escalation of previous sanctions.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-big-tech-advances-despite-us-curbs#xj4y7vzkg

China’s Top Chipmaker Achieves Breakthrough Despite US Curbs

• SMIC has started shipping 7nm chips, TechInsights says
• US suppliers need licenses to ship most advanced gear to SMIC

Debby Wu and
Jenny Leonard

July 21, 2022, 5:43 AM UTC Updated on July 21, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC


Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. has likely advanced its production technology by two generations, defying US sanctions intended to halt the rise of China’s largest chipmaker.
The Shanghai-based manufacturer is shipping Bitcoin-mining semiconductors built using 7-nanometer technology, industry watcher TechInsights wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. That’s well ahead of SMIC’s established 14nm technology, a measure of fabrication complexity in which narrower transistor widths help produce faster and more efficient chips. Since late 2020, the US has barred the unlicensed sale to the Chinese firm of equipment that can be used to fabricate semiconductors of 10nm and beyond, infuriating Beijing.

 

[etudiant]

Seems an escalation of previous sanctions.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-big-tech-advances-despite-us-curbs#xj4y7vzkg

China’s Top Chipmaker Achieves Breakthrough Despite US Curbs

• SMIC has started shipping 7nm chips, TechInsights says
• US suppliers need licenses to ship most advanced gear to SMIC

Debby Wu and
Jenny Leonard

July 21, 2022, 5:43 AM UTC Updated on July 21, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC


Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. has likely advanced its production technology by two generations, defying US sanctions intended to halt the rise of China’s largest chipmaker.
The Shanghai-based manufacturer is shipping Bitcoin-mining semiconductors built using 7-nanometer technology, industry watcher TechInsights wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. That’s well ahead of SMIC’s established 14nm technology, a measure of fabrication complexity in which narrower transistor widths help produce faster and more efficient chips. Since late 2020, the US has barred the unlicensed sale to the Chinese firm of equipment that can be used to fabricate semiconductors of 10nm and beyond, infuriating Beijing.

That report underlines the pervasiveness of technology, once the idea is understood, competent people will find a way to implement it.
SMIC is simply using a quadruple patterning approach to the chip lithography, using existing 192nm deep UV, just as Intel stuck with double patterning too long because the extreme UV lithography tools were not able to handle the volumes of chips Intel needed. Of course, that hesitation also cost Intel its technology leadership, as Taiwan Semiconductor lead the world into the EUV era.
The SMIC method is not compatible with high volume production, each lithography cycle involves dozens of steps, each of which has some slight loss fraction.
Repeating the cycle four times is anathema to any manufacturer interested in getting a high yield of good chips from the very expensive wafer processing effort.
However, if China wants the chips badly, SMIC can and will deliver, just at higher cost than if there were no embargo on more modern production gear.

 

[Emily]

A Dutch company with a US presence got caught up in this. I hope this doesn't put US citizens out of work. Semiconductor ETF's look down and this company is down over 6%.

https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc/status/1580889362103169026/photo/1

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Jordan Schneider
@jordanschnyc

Many people don’t understand why this is annihilation. ASML has stopped providing services and support to mainland China.

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6:52 AM · Oct 14, 2022·chirr.app