Once upon a time, countries protected their domestic industries with tariffs on imports. This gave the home side a price advantage over companies operating overseas, but the practice has somewhat fallen out of fashion in the past few decades.
These days, governments are altogether more creative, using fancy export controls to protect their interests. To that end, the United States enacted an export restriction on high-powered computing devices. In response, Chinese designers are attempting to artificially slow their hardware to dodge these rules.
The new export rules come as the US government grapples with the ascendance of China’s military, in both size and technological sophistication. The regulations restrict the export of advanced integrated circuits, but the regulations don’t stop there. The tooling, software, and other manufacturing equipment required to fabricate such hardware is also subject to the rules. The often-stated aim is to slow or halt the development of advanced military devices that could be used by the Chinese government or sold on to other countries. Alternatively, it could be painted as an attempt to safeguard the advantage of existing players in the semiconductor market.
Chips capable of an “aggregate bidirectional transfer rate over all inputs and outputs” exceeding 600 GB/s, not counting to volatile memory, may not be exported or re-exported to China, under the new rules. Advanced manufacturing tools used for electroplating, chemical vapor deposition, and other chip-production processes are similarly banned from export. Just to cover all bases, software packages for the design, manufacturing, or use of these chips or associated hardware is also subject to the sanctions. Companies can apply for a license to export such material to China, however, as with most such restrictions, there is a presumption that such licenses will be denied. Other restrictions apply to chips exceeding certain machine learning performance limits and powerful supercomputers.
Additionally, regarding exports of items not subject to the above restrictions, “US persons” must have a license if the items will be used in the “development” or “production” of ICs in China meeting certain criteria. This includes chips that use a non-planar architecture, or are made at a technology node of 14 nm or less, as well as NAND memory with 128 or more layers, and DRAM made at a node of 18 nm or less. The category of “US persons” is broad, too, including US citizens, permanent residents, and companies and legal entities established in the US, even when operating abroad.
Chinese tech giant Alibaba and smaller startup Biren Technology have since found themselves struggling with the restrictions. Along with a variety of lesser-known Chinese chip firms, they’ve invested heavily in designing new chips for high-powered computing applications. These include new chips to rival GPUs from companies like Nvidia and AMD, along with processors for machine learning applications.
But Alibaba and Biren are fabless, outsourcing the actual production step. Many of these firms have their designs produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), considered a world-leading silicon foundry.
Some of the latest designs from these companies are in contravention of the new export rules, in terms of data rates or other factors. While they’re slated for production in Taiwan, the US export regulations nonetheless have an effect. That’s due to the fact that the vast majority of semiconductor fabs around the world rely on US-made equipment and software. If foreign fabs started shipping such designs to China, they would quickly be cut off from US equipment and software necessary to the facility’s work. China is spinning up its own semiconductor production facilities, but they’re presently years or decades behind the cutting-edge and thus can’t produce such advanced designs.
Biren Technology is at risk of running over the limit with its BR100 GPU, which is intended for machine learning applications. Early statements quoted a figure of 640 GB/s, in excess of the stated limit. Since then, the company’s website has listed the card’s bandwith at various figures from 512 GB/s to 448 GB/s. According to some researchers, the company may be disabling parts of the BR100 chip to slide past the limit, while potentially allowing it to be re-enabled later.
Alibaba’s own efforts are facing similar troubles. The company has been working on advanced machine-learning chips for AI work at TSMC’s 5 nm technology node. Reportedly, the team is exploring reworking the designs to avoid issues with the regulations, but this is a costly exercise that would take many months and millions of dollars.
Engineers have complained that the rules aren’t clear cut, as there are various ways to calculate the bidirectional transfer rate. Regardless, many are already working to reduce processor speeds to skirt by the rules. The key is remaining low-key, according to one source speaking to Ars Technica. Some companies have had press materials out in public for chips with transfer rates in excess of the regulations, alerting authorities to monitor shipments of such parts. In cases where a chip’s capabilities aren’t yet widely known, though, engineers have more potential to work with the fab to find a redesign that could bypass the regulations.
Part of a Trend
It’s not the first time that US export regulations have tried to clip the wings of Chinese tech firms. Huawei’s semiconductor arm, HiSilicon, fell afoul of a previous set of export rules in 2019. Initial sanctions were placed on the company due to backdoors allgedly found in Huawei’s communications equipment. These rules cut off Huawei’s access to software and hardware from companies like Intel, Google, and Qualcomm. However, Huawei persevered with its own chips and apps, with Chinese buyers propping up the company’s sales as international business faltered. HiSilicon quickly became the number one supplier of smartphone chipsets in China.
From there, the US government went up the chain, making it illegal to supply HiSilicon with equipment for its semiconductor fabs. That was the death knell for the company’s flagship smartphone chipsets, and it was quickly overtaken by other companies in the market.
Access to the world’s best silicon fabs is key to building high-performance chips. Presently, the US holds the keys to those, thanks to a monopoly on the supply of cutting-edge manufacturing equipment and design software. China will persevere on spinning up its own capacity, in much the same way as it has pursued the production of its own jet engines and other technologies. However, in much the same way, that’s a long, slow road to walk, and a costly one to boot.
Banner image: “Silicon Wafer” by Enrique Jiménez
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