Samsung’s Chinese rival, Huawei, allegedly used HBM chips from Samsung and smuggled dies from TSMC to develop the Ascend 910C AI chip, despite restrictions.
The US chip export controls on China have restricted the ability to source and locally produce advanced AI chips due to limits on accessing the latest chipmaking technology, but it seems that Chinese firms are not willing to accept these restrictions.
A new report from a reliable blog, Bloomberg, revealed that under the hood, Huawei is developing its Ascend 910C AI chip, for which it smuggled dies from TSMC and used HBM chips from Samsung.
Reportedly, despite export restrictions, Huawei was able to secure TSMC dies to produce almost three million Ascend AI chips through a shell company. Although TSMC had to pay quite a high price for the leaked die that found its way to China, it was fined $1 billion.
According to the report, the die is packaged with previous-generation high-bandwidth memory chips from both Samsung and SK Hynix. Chinese manufacturers still lack access to the latest generation of memory chips, and the ones they stockpiled are running out. Manufacturers are now reportedly considering desoldering memory chips from loosely packaged products manufactured precisely for sanctions deceit.
However, despite every possible effort, Chinese firms are still struggling hard with immense challenges in producing enough AI chips to meet domestic demand.
