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Keeping pace with earlier sanctions to stop American-origin semiconductor technologies from making their way to the Chinese military, the U.S. Department of Commerce has further restricted some chips that Intel and Qualcomm can supply to the Chinese technology firm Huawei. The new sanctions are in response to national security interests, according to a Department of Commerce spokesperson who spoke with the Financial Times, which also reported on the license revocations.
U.S. sanctions against Huawei have focused on leading-edge semiconductor technologies as well as products such as artificial intelligence processors, which might be used by the Chinese military. The sanctions have often been followed by multiple reports showing some progress by Huawei in being able to gain access to advanced chips for its smartphones and computers.
U.S. Expands Chip Sanctions Against Huawei For National Security, Foreign Policy Interests
According to the Financial Times report, the Commerce Department has canceled some of the licenses that it had granted to Intel and Qualcomm for selling chips to Huawei. These actions are aimed at stopping products that are used in Huawei's personal computing gadgets, but the categories and specifications of these chips are unclear. Huawei has previously come under American sanctions after the US government stopped Taiwanese contract semiconductor manufacturer TSMC from accepting new orders from the firm in 2020.
In response to queries from the FT, Commerce confirmed that some new export license revocations had been approved. However, officials did not reveal the U.S. companies affected by these changes. Qualcomm is known for its smartphone processors, modems, graphics processors, and other chips, while Intel created quite a bit of a splash earlier this year after Huawei claimed its first A.I.-powered personal computer would use Intel's products.
Intel is eager to re-establish itself as the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer by using advanced chip manufacturing machines that are able to manipulate ultraviolet light to varying degrees. One product that uses these machines is the firm's high-end Core Ultra 9 chip, and Huawei's consumer business CEO Richard Yu revealed last month that his firm's MateBook X Pro - a high-end laptop - will use this processor.
Reuters' sources reported in March that Intel's primary CPU rival AMD had pressured the U.S. government to either grant it a license to sell the same chips to China or revoke Intel's license as well. It remains unclear whether the chips, or semiconductors, mentioned in this report also included the Ultra 9 or if the chip was also part of the revocations reported by FT.
Chip tensions between the U.S. and China rose last year after Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo's visit to China coincided with the launch date of Huawei's Mate 60 Pro smartphone. Continuing this tradition, today's report by the Financial Times has coincided with the day that Huawei officially revealed the Matebook X Pro laptop.
Apart from chips, U.S. sanctions have also taken aim at the advanced machines required to manufacture leading-edge semiconductors. Dutch firm ASML holds a monopoly over these machines and it cannot sell these to Chinese chip makers such as the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).
