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Yesterday, it was reported that the US Department of Commerce is investigating the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) over suspicions that the chipmaker may have been subverting 5G export controls to make "artificial intelligence or smartphone chips for the Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies," sources with direct knowledge told The Information.
The Department of Commerce has yet to officially announce the probe and declined Ars' request for comment. But TSMC promptly issued a statement today, defending itself as "a law-abiding company" that's "committed to complying with laws and regulations, including export controls."
Nobody except anyone who reads TechInsights reports. We already knew that SMIC had taped out a cryptomining ASIC with the N+2 process. SMIC announced work on the N+2 process years before. SMIC also fabbed the Kirin 710A with 14nm FinFET for Huawei's HiSilicon before that.
That fab which made the Kirin 710A was sanctioned by the US government. So of course all production there must have stopped. Which is why they expanded those same facilities to double the size afterwards. It is just the Chinese government trying to inflate another property bubble. Except this time by building empty fab shells.
Clearly the only place where Huawei can source these advanced chips is at TSMC.
The team which designed the 7 nm FinFET SMIC N+2 process previously worked at Samsung where they designed their FinFET process. Which was good enough for the likes of IBM and NVIDIA. Before that a lot of them were at TSMC where they designed the 28 nm HKMG process.
The team found evidence of SMIC 7nm (N+2) which represents a made-in-China design and manufacturing milestone for the most advanced Chinese foundry TechInsights has documented. Some of the highlights include:
The Kirin 9000s die measured 107 mm2, which is 2% larger than the Kirin 9000 (105 mm2). From various identifying features on the die, the team concluded the processor is manufactured by SMIC.
Initial lab results indicated that this die is more advanced than SMIC’s 14nm process node but presents larger critical dimensions (CDs) than what TechInsights has observed for 5nm process.
Additional measurements of critical dimensions (CDs) on the die, including logic gate pitch, fin pitch and lower back-end-of-line (BEOL) metallization pitches, the analyst team concluded the die has 7nm features.
The team found evidence of SMIC 7nm (N+2) which represents a made-in-China design and manufacturing milestone for the most advanced Chinese foundry TechInsights has documented. Some of the highlights include:
The Kirin 9000s die measured 107 mm2, which is 2% larger than the Kirin 9000 (105 mm2). From various identifying features on the die, the team concluded the processor is manufactured by SMIC.
Initial lab results indicated that this die is more advanced than SMIC’s 14nm process node but presents larger critical dimensions (CDs) than what TechInsights has observed for 5nm process.
Additional measurements of critical dimensions (CDs) on the die, including logic gate pitch, fin pitch and lower back-end-of-line (BEOL) metallization pitches, the analyst team concluded the die has 7nm features.
I guess it's easy to vet the customers for mobile SOCs as there are only a handful. The wording here is "subverting 5G export controls"
Kirin series seem to have baseband chip and AP integrated.
However, there are other 5G chips such as RF transceiver, Power Amplifiers etc. Not sure if they vet these well. Fabs in China probably can do these too but not as good.
"Innocent until proven guilty" but given the stakes and level of corporate intrigue/"insider risk", this doesn't seem too implausible for someone at some level doing something that helps get advanced chips to China. TSMC is a pretty large organization with multiple layers of management, and China is known to use a lot of levers for compromising individuals.
(I personally think the actual manufacturing claim seems a bit far fetched, but design assistance is a lot easier to conceal. The latter could just be a couple of bad actors alone).
On a fun note - not nearly the same world class reputation as TSMC, but Jack Tramel's Atari was smuggling in DRAM chips against trade Japanese/American restrictions (and reselling them!) in the late 1980s. By the time the FBI investigation was about to go full bore, they decided Atari was already cooked (which it was) so they dropped the criminal charges in the early 1990s. Strange things do happen.
arstechnica.com
