TSMC can be affected by a fine exceeding $ 1 billion by the American Trade Department for unknowingly providing Huawei Calculation Chiplet for the AI Ais-Series processor, AI. Reuters Reports. Such a high fine would be a scarce and perhaps a record, although it also seems to reveal the volume of tokens that Huawei received from TSMC through fraud.
A potential fine worth $ 1 billion is based on export principles, which allow sanctions to double the value of any unauthorized transaction. So far, no official actions have been taken against TSMC in accordance with the report. In similar cases, the Trade Department usually sends a document known as the proposed charging letter, violation dates, transaction values and good calculations. Then the company has 30 days to answer. In the past, in 2023, Seagate punished a fine of $ 300 million for sending tough drives worth $ 1.1 billion to Huawei.
Last year, it turned out that the calculation chiplet, which TSMC created for Sophgo, an ally of the supplier of equipment for extraction of cryptocurrencies, Bitmain, was actually a computing chiplet for the 910 processor in Huawei for AI. Huawei has been on the list of US Department of Trade Department units since mid -2020, and companies such as TSMC must apply for an export license from USDOC to provide Huawei products containing American technologies that include the creation of tool systems developed and manufactured by companies based in the USA.
After Techinsights revealed that Hisilicon Ascend Huawei Ascend 910 used the chiplet, TSMC suspended his shipments to Sophgo and is now working with the Department of Trade in this matter. In January, Sophgo was placed on the list of USDOC entities. However, it remains vague how many (indirectly) TSMC (indirect) (indirectly) for Huawei.
When TSMC receives a system design for production, he cannot determine its original programmer, as well as its final purpose or user. That is why you can make mistakes such as a company made of Sophgo. However, this calculation chiplet of 910 series 910 should probably cause alarms because it contained tens of billions of transistors (i.e. it was arduous to develop), but it came from a little -known company related to the designer of equipment for mining bitcoins.
This certainly made the American Department of Trade, which did a lot to limit the sale of advanced AI processors for Chinese entities, especially in anger, because Sopgo bought millions of chiplet for Huawei.
Since the Sophgo scandal appeared in the autumn of 2024, TSMC has become much more cautious. At the beginning of this year, the company ceased to report from Singapore after its internal investigation aroused concerns about the possible violations of export control in the USA.
One of the problems for TSMC is that Huawei seems to apply external companies that hide as “independent” chip designers to get world -class systems such as TSMC. Huawei himself does everything in his power to hide the origin of these tokens, to continue to get them despite the restrictions imposed by the US government. As a result, TSMC and other squirrel manufacturers may fall victims of Huawei fraud.
