US-China tech war: supercomputer sanctions on China begin to bite as Taiwan’s TSMC said to suspend chip orders

TSMC said to be no longer accepting new orders from Phytium, one of seven Chinese entities involved in supercomputing blacklisted by the US last week

The blacklist could hurt China’s supercomputer efforts, but experts say it might not have much impact on military technology, a main concern of the US

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on April 7, 2021. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 9:00pm, 13 Apr 2021Updated: 11:11am, 19 May 2021

Washington’s new supercomputer sanctions on China are already beginning to bite, as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has suspended new orders from Phytium Information Technology Co, one of seven Chinese organisations related to supercomputing that was put on the US Entity List last week, according to a person familiar with the matter.

TSMC will complete orders placed before the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security added the entities to the trade blacklist on national security grounds, the person told the South China Morning Post.

A TSMC representative declined to comment on the matter but said the company would “abide by all the laws and regulations as always, and will operate according to the export restrictions”, without elaborating further.

Phytium did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Even as China has sought to boost self-reliance in semiconductors in recent years, it remains highly reliant on overseas chips. The country’s supercomputers primarily use CPUs from Intel, AMD and IBM, according to Francis Lau, a computer science professor at the University of Hong Kong.