The following year, an export rule change made by the Commerce Department no longer allowed foundries using American technology to send cutting-edge semiconductors to Huawei. The goal was to keep 5G chips away from Huawei and away from China’s military. It was in the works from 2021 until summer 2023 when Huawei announced the Mate 60 Pro. The flagship phone was powered by the new Huawei 5G chipset made by China’s SMIC using its 7nm node. For the first time since the Mate 40 line, the Mate 60 series gave Huawei a 5G-supported high-end phone to sell.
The TSMC-made chip was discovered by TechInsights when it took apart the Ascend 910B. Once the chip was found in a Huawei AI processor, TechInsights notified TSMC. After the foundry told the US Commerce Department and matched the chip to Sofgo’s design, the Taiwan-based chip maker suspended shipments to Sofgo. American officials are currently investigating this matter.
Huawei’s Ascend 910B, expected to launch in 2022, is considered the most advanced AI chip available from a Chinese company. The Huawei Ascend 910C follow-up will be mass produced early next year. That chip is designed to compete with NVIDIA’s top AI silicon. On November 11, the US ordered TSMC not to ship advanced chips to China using a 7nm or higher process node. Huawei says it no longer has any chips made by TSMC after new US export rules took effect in 2020.
Sofgo is going to be placed in the entity list of the commerce department. , Image Credit-Gigazine
Sofgo said in October that it “has never been involved in any direct or indirect business relationship with Huawei.” Typically, Sofgo does business with local governments and state-owned firms, exemplified by China Telecom. Over the past two years, Sofgo and Bitmain AI chips were purchased by state-run universities and police stations making AI tools in China to improve their surveillance operations.
