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TSMC reportedly stops taking orders from Huawei after new U.S. export controls
Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract semiconductor maker, has stopped taking new orders from Huawei Technologies, one of its largest customers, according to the Nikkei Asian Review. The report said the decision was made to comply with new United States export controls, announced last Friday, that are meant to make it more difficult for Huawei to obtain chips produced using U.S. technology, including manufacturing equipment.
Huawei hits back at US as TSMC cuts off chip orders
Huawei rotating chairman Guo Ping has hit back at the US government's stricter export controls intended to stop the Chinese tech giant from obtaining essential chips, following reports that its biggest supplier has already cut it off. "We still haven't figured it out," Guo said on stage at Huawei's annual analyst summit. "The US government still persists in attacking Huawei, but what will that bring to the world?"
"In its relentless pursuit to tighten its stranglehold on our company, the US government has decided to proceed and completely ignore the concerns of many companies and industry associations," Huawei adds in an official statement. "This decision was arbitrary and pernicious, and threatens to undermine the entire industry worldwide. This new rule will impact the expansion, maintenance, and continuous operations of networks worth hundreds of billions of dollars that we have rolled out in more than 170 countries."
"We expect that our business will inevitably be affected," Huawei's statement continues. "We will try all we can to seek a solution."
See also: Huawei Braces for Latest U.S. Hit, but Some Say Loopholes Remain
TSMC Accepts US Kill Order & Suspends Future Huawei Contracts
Previously: U.S. Attempting to Restrict TSMC Sales to Huawei
Washington in Talks with Chipmakers about Building U.S. Factories
TSMC Will Build a $12 Billion "5nm" Fab in Arizona
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 19 2020, @03:50AM (6 children)
This will surely slow down technological progress, and raise prices.
Maybe paranoia about embedded spyware is justified. But these moves are highly preemptive and negative. It's the wrong approach to the potential problem. Building our own infrastructure is a much better idea. Couldn't we do only the latter, and lay off the provocative and discriminatory policy choices? November can't come soon enough.
I remember a brief period we could get this Kumho brand o tire for just $20 per. Way, way cheaper than any other brand. The tire store inflated that to $50 per tire with all their mounting fees, disposal fees, and so on. But it was still nice to get a whole new set of tires for only $200, and they were even decent quality, not the low end 30k mile stuff. Today, it's tough to get a new set of 4 for less than $500. Kumho was Chinese of course. Then the US imposed dumping fees, tariffs, and all that, and the $20 tire vanished from the marketplace never to be seen again.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 19 2020, @04:01AM (2 children)
Not necessarily. There are many smartphone brands that aren't affected. And as a result of Huawei getting the boot, there will be more TSMC capacity available for AMD, Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc. AMD recently became TSMC's biggest customer for at least a quarter and is using a lot of "7nm" capacity for next-gen console chips this year, constraining the amount of desktop CPUs and GPUs it can make. As the leader in semiconductor manufacturing, TSMC will have no trouble finding companies to fill Huawei's gap.
As for technological progress, TSMC is on [wikichip.org] that [soylentnews.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday May 19 2020, @04:05AM (1 child)
That assumes all the other companies have the necessary orders and bucketloads of money lying around to fill the gaps. More likely TSMC will be severely hurt by losing their second largest source of revenue and have to severely curtail investment in new plants and processes. Result: Everyone loses, not just Huawei.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by petecox on Tuesday May 19 2020, @05:38AM
It's a perfect storm with covid's forthcoming global recession causing a drop in demand for consumer electronics generally.
Conversely, with US companies on shoring to TMSC's American plant, reduced demand could see more favourable 5nm conditions for locals such as mediatek (that $99 Walmart tablet) and rockchip (arm64 Chromebook) with resulting extra bang for buck at the low end.
But, if I were an industry pundit, South Korean Samsung sits on the sidelines with anticipation.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2020, @02:27PM (2 children)
How long ago was this? Kumho Tires was only bought by a Chinese company in 2018. It was originally a South Korean company.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 19 2020, @06:30PM (1 child)
About 20 years ago, as I recall.
South Korean? We didn't check, just thought it had to be China, with that kind of name and price.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2020, @08:30PM
Kumho has been a well respected brand of tire (even performance tires!) for 30+ years. They were the OEM tire for a number of japanese cars from the 1990s who didn't use Bridgestone/Firestone tires.
My sports car had kumho tires almost 30 years ago now.