TSMC will halt production of AI chips for Chinese firms produced using a 7nm node or lower starting on Monday.
According to a report in The Financial Times, the world’s leading foundry, TSMC, will suspend the production of advanced AI chips for clients in China starting on Monday. The Financial Times cited three sources familiar with the matter. More precisely, the report says that TSMC has told companies that design chips that it will suspend production of cutting-edge AI chips produced using a process node of 7nm or smaller. This dovetails with U.S. sanctions banning the shipments of advanced GPU chips to China. These chips help enable AI.
The U.S. is concerned that if China is able to obtain AI chips, they could be used to improve the country’s military capabilities. Earlier this month the U.S. fined GlobalFoundries $500,000 for shipping chips without authority to China’s largest foundry (and the third largest in the world after TSMC and Samsung Foundry) SMIC.
Last month TSMC halted shipments of chips to a client after some of the chips produced for the client ended up in a Huawei AI device.
