Last week, the US Commerce Department released a new order barring chip manufacturers from supplying Huawei with semiconductors or chip designs built in the US. Today, TSMC responded today by ceasing to take new chip orders from the Chinese company.
As Nikkei reports, the decision by TSMC is thought to be an extremely difficult one as a person familiar with the situation pointed out Huawei is the company's "No. 2 customer." However, the flip side to the decision was the announcement last week of TSMC's intention to build a 5nm chip factory in Arizona. It's a project the company points out requires a "continued strong partnership with the US administration and the State of Arizona."
TSMC has existing chip orders with Huawei that are already in production. Such manufacturing can continue as long as TSMC manages to ship the chips before mid-September. It seems likely at least a partial delivery of the order to Huawei will happen by then.
As The Verge reports, an official statement by Huawei hits out at the US government regarding the new order, stating, "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 ... 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."
Further Reading
- TSMC Is Building a 5nm Chip Factory in Arizona
- Intel's 'Comet Lake-S' Desktop CPUs Offer Up to 10 Cores of Computing Muscle
- AMD Launches Its 'Fastest Ever' Ryzen 3 Desktop Processors
- Intel's 10th Generation H-Series Core CPUs, 'Comet Lake-H,' Arrive in Laptops This Month
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