Information/Technology - 31. page

Major Taiwanese news network Liberty Times Network (LTN) recently reported that, according to an official document that the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued, the U.S. government has decided to apply export controls on goods sold to SMIC based on the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR) Section 744.21. The restriction is based on the fact that SMIC products are ultimately used for military purposes. The U.S. Department of Commerce has informed U.S. export companies about this decision. The document listed SMIC and its branches as well as directly related companies inside and outside of China. SMIC is China’s largest chip maker and Huawei’s only hope for a domestic supply of chips. However, SMIC depends heavily on U.S. technology for manufacturing equipment and software. Also, SMIC technology is generations behind leading chip-making vendors like TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). This new U.S. sanction will place huge pressure on Huawei as well as the entire Chinese chip-making industry.

Source: LTN, September 26, 2020
https://ec.ltn.com.tw/article/breakingnews/3304204

Taiwanese news site NewTalk recently reported that U.S. Pentagon officials advised that the Trump administration is considering blacklisting Chinese domestic chip maker SMIC due to its ties to the Chinese military. This could cause major damage to the Chinese chip-making industry, since SMIC is China’s largest and the most advanced chip manufacturer. It is also Huawei’s only hope for low-end chip supply. SMIC has issued announcements claiming it has no relationship with the Chinese military. However, according to Mainland media reports, SMIC was the sole manufacturer for the KD5660 Level-A network exchange chip designed by a company named ArmyFly, which is headquartered in Beijing and is dedicated to serving the Chinese military with focuses on army information network and equipment innovation. The KD560 chip even won the highest award issued by the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission. ArmyFly’s customers are all military branches and SMIC, as its award-winning chip supplier, now declares it has nothing to do with ArmyFly.

Source: NewTalk, September 10, 2020
https://newtalk.tw/news/view/2020-09-10/463575

Well-known Chinese news site NetEase (NASDAQ: NTES) recently reported that Micron, Huawei’s sole primary memory and flash memory supplier for 20 years, announced compliance with the U.S. ban on Huawei. This is another major blow to Huawei’s supply chain after TSMC’s similar announcement. Micron is the world’s largest semiconductor memory vendor. Micron, Samsung and Hynix together own 95 percent of the world’s DRAM market. Micron is also one of the six vendors that together hold 99 percent of the world’s NAND flash memory market. The only hope Huawei has now is to obtain domestic support from Yangtze Memory Technologies for NAND, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) for DRAM, and Jinhua Integrated Circuit (JHICC) for DRAM. However, the U.S. already banned JHICC in 2018, due to a lawsuit that Micron filed for unauthorized use of intellectual properties. Yangtze Memory’s manufacturing process depends heavily on high-end equipment like the mask aligners from the Netherland’s SAML, which also uses U.S technology. If the U.S. blacklists the other two Chinese domestic suppliers, Huawei will face a death sentence on the memory side too, in addition to the central processing chips.

Source: NetEase, September 2, 2020
http://dy.163.com/article/FLJ48FM70517M7S3.html

Major Taiwanese news network Liberty Times Network (LTN) recently reported that, with the United Stated continuously tightening up sanctions against Huawei in order to cut off its chip-making capabilities, leading U.S. Electronic Design Automation (EDA) vendor Synopsys saw strong growth. The source of the growth came mainly from China. Many integrated Circuit (IC) companies in China suddenly started purchasing chip design software on a large scale. This type of software is on the Huawei sanction list, so Huawei can no long purchase licenses. Synopsys, along with two other U.S. companies Cadence and ANSYS, plus the German vendor Siemens, control over ninety percent of the global chip design software market. Chinese local governments were also found to be purchasing U.S. EDA software. IT Experts from Japan expressed the belief that it is highly likely Huawei can use Chinese chip design firms to perform the design work previously done by its own branch named HiSilicon. All it takes is for HiSilicon to send a group of semiconductor engineers to a small local firm to bypass U.S. sanctions on software completely.

Source: LTN, August 21, 2020
https://ec.ltn.com.tw/article/breakingnews/3267514