American sanctions now need to use US-watery OSATS (outsourced semiconductor assembly & test), so that they can get chips assembled by TSMC. A ‘fabless’ chip designer is one who does not own any chip manufacturing features or fabs. Thus, these firms turn to TSMC to produce chips based on designs presented to the Taiwan-based contract foundry.
The new American rules also prevent exports of chips to China with more than 30 billion transistors produced using the 16Nm process node or less until developers receive licenses from the US Department of Commerce. The US, Taiwan and concerned nations can also try to get a permit if chips are being sold to approved customers. China’s Dipsek-R1 was allegedly trained using 2,048 NVidia H800 GPU over a two-month period. The Nvidia H800 GPU built on the 4Nm process node allegedly packs 80 billion transistors that should make the chip powerful and energy efficient.
Deepsek iOS app. , Image Credit Fonena
Despite the new sanctions, companies such as Apple, AMD, Intel, MediaTek, and others are expected to obtain license for chips with more than 30 billion transistors. However, companies such as mainstream GPU that AMD, Intel, and Nvidia were first sold to Chinese firms without restrictions, now a license would be required to send China. It is interesting that in some cases the TSMC restrictions are also tight compared to those imposed by the US.
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