US Gov't to restrict China on exporting American chips and tools

US President Joe Biden plans to broaden the restrictions regarding American shipments to China of semiconductors used in AI and chipmaking tools.

Biden to broaden restrictions against China in exporting US chips and tools

Biden administration to be more strict in China's US chips and tools export

The US Department of Commerce plans to publish new regulations based on restrictions imposed earlier this year on three US companies namely KLA Corp, Lam Research Corp, and Applied Materials Inc. The restrictions prohibited the companies from exporting chipmaking equipment to Chinese factories that produced advanced semiconductors with sub-14nm processes unless the sellers obtain proper Commerce Department licenses.

In addition, the Department of Commerce also sent restrictions to NVIDIA Corp and Advanced Micro Devices last month forbidding them to ship several AI computing chips to China unless proper licenses are obtained.

These letters allow the Department of Commerce to bypass lengthy rule-writing processes to put controls and restrictions as early as possible. However, these letters only apply to the companies that receive them. Down the line, if the US gov't turns the letters into rules then it could subject other companies providing similar technology to adhere to the restrictions as well.

The rules could also require licenses on shipments to China of products that contain targeted chips. For instance, Dell, HP, and Super Micro all make data center servers with NVIDIA's A100 chip.

There are also rumors of the US gov't planning to expand the US trade blacklist by adding additional Chinese supercomputing companies as well.

What do you guys think?

Source: Reuters