China’s largest chipmaker will be shut down if it sells to Russia

It seems that the China’s largest chipmaker would sanctioned and closed if you sell components to Russia. According to official sources.

In the midst of all the international sanctions on the Russian Federation for its invasion of Ukraine, the Secretary of the United States Department of CommerceGina Raimondo has stated that her country will target Chinese chipmakers if they decide to supply products to Russia.

Most of the world’s advanced semiconductors are developed by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which has officially announced that it will comply with “requests” from the US government to stop supplying products to Russia.

US sanctions are designed to prevent Russian military and government agencies from accessing advanced technologies. This was the official statement from the Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce:

“Russia is certainly going to court other countries to circumvent our sanctions and export controls. But if the United States found out that a company like Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation was selling its chips to Russia, “we could basically shut down SMIC because we prevented them from using our equipment and our software.”

He added: “They have their own interest in not supplying this material to Russia. So don’t do it out of the goodness of your heart. It would be devastating for China’s ability to produce these chips.”

Due to restrictions, the chip industry may take a big hit

Although foreign companies such as TSMC are in charge of directly manufacturing the semiconductors, a large number of hardware and software products of American origin are used in the process. This allows the Department of Commerce exert its influence in the semiconductor industry by limiting the ability of countries acting contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States to acquire advanced products.

United States already used these sanctions to limit the capacity of the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies to purchase advanced semiconductor products from TSMC. This was due to the company’s ties to the Chinese military, and subsequent sanctions also limited the Chinese company’s ability Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) to produce advanced chips.

These restrictions are announced in December 2020, and targeted manufacturing processes 10 nanometers and smaller. In the semiconductor industry, a manufacturing process is often named after one of the dimensions of the transistor it is made from, with smaller dimensions signifying technological advances.

This cold war is having a special focus on controlling the flow of capital, technology and sabotaging markets. And this shows, it is already having an impact on prices throughout the world. So war isn’t just a bad thing for the chip industry, which will, of course, take a big hit from these new restrictions. But also, it will cause unrest in the world in general.

What do you think of these restrictions that the Americans put on Chinese chip manufacturers? Are they to stop Russia or are they just another control mechanism for the US to return to dominate the global market?

Source: wccftech