The new Cold War » China's Big Fund | The CHIPS Act | America's fab renaissance | Roots of the conflict | The impact in 2023 | The impact in 2022
Semiconductors power everything from PCs and data centers to cars, lightbulbs, and refrigerators. Control over their manufacture means control over billions of dollars and the world economy -- and the US, China, Taiwan, and others are waging a geopolitical battle for exactly that. Welcome to the chip war.
Major moments
May 8, 2024: The U.S. government has withdrawn select export licenses from Intel and Qualcomm, effectively preventing them from supplying processors to Huawei.
Mar. 9, 2024: China is assembling the third phase of its Big Fund investment in semiconductor projects, a $27 billion investment to counter U.S. sanctions.
Jan. 27, 2024: The Department of Commerce (DOC) introduced a proposal to prevent foreign entities, particularly from China, from using U.S. cloud computing for AI model training, a new level to the conflict.
Nov. 02, 2023: The Nvidia RTX 4090 -- The fastest gaming GPU -- will no longer be available for export to China starting Nov. 17.
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Oct. 24, 2023: The DOC sped up the implementation of its latest export curbs, immediately blocking Nvidia from shipping A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S GPUs to China.
Oct. 7, 2023: Senators Marco Rubio and Mark Warner demand a limit to China's access to American RISC-V innovations.
Aug. 10, 2023: President Joe Biden signed an executive order restricting U.S. investments in Chinese tech sectors, including AI, semiconductors, and quantum computing.
Aug. 01, 2022: The U.S. extended its ban on chipmaking equipment produced by domestic firms that are sold to Chinese companies.
Dec. 18, 2020: The DOC blacklisted SMIC along with 60 other Chinese companies citing ties with the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
Latest about chip war
Sanctioned China firms creating front companies to acquire AI chips, says report
America's ban on high-tech exports to China doesn't isn't always very effective in stopping the flow of the latest chips into the country.
New US government rules to allow export of some equipment to China by ASML, Tokyo Electron
The U.S. intends to add 120 Chinese entities to its Entity List, to close loopholes that enable Chinese chipmakers to obtain American chipmaking tools.
DJI drone ban dropped by the U.S. Senate
The ‘Countering CCP Drones Act’ which would ban all DJI drone sales in the U.S. has been shot down by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee from its version of the NDAA.
Trump says Taiwan should pay US for defense — 'They did take about 100% of our chip business'
In a Bloomberg interview, former President Donald Trump said that the US should be paid to protect Taiwan from China, and highlighted the island's dominance in chipmaking.
US, China Chip War may continue for decades, says former ASML CEO
The Chip War is fought over ideology, not factual basis, says tech boss
China beat the U.S. in generative AI patents by 6-to-1 for the past ten years — almost 10,000 Chinese patents filed last year alone
China has more patents than the six top nations in generative AI research.
Samsung Texas fab delayed for 2nm upgrade to face-off with TSMC and Intel, according to Korean media
Industry sources say that one of the reasons for the delay of Samsung's Texas fab is that it is considering upgrading it from 4nm to 2nm.
China only produces 1% of critical litho chipmaking tools, exposing it to harsh US sanctions
Only 20% of China's chipmaking tools are domestically made, putting the country at the mercy of external forces.
U.S. delays Nvidia, AMD AI GPU export licenses to Middle East
U.S. does not want AMD and Nvidia sell their advanced AI and HPC GPUs to Middle East countries as these processors could be resold to China, or accessed by Chinese entities from the cloud
Microsoft offers to relocate nearly 10% of China-based staffers to the US or allied nations — AI and cloud engineering exodus from China begins
Microsoft offers over 700 AI and Cloud Computing engineers and other staffers in its China operation to move to the U.S., Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand.