TSMC could face over $1 billion fine for violating Huawei export ban

Oops: TSMC could be fined more than $1 billion by the U.S. Commerce Department for allegedly – and apparently inadvertently – supplying sanctioned Huawei with a chiplet that ended up in the Ascend 910B AI accelerator. The size of the potential penalty stems from export control regulations, which allow fines of up to twice the value of transactions that violate the rules. The Commerce Department has been investigating TSMC over its work for Chinese chip designer Sophgo, which was cut off from TSMC last year following allegations it was attempting to supply components to Huawei. According to Reuters, which cites two unnamed people familiar with the matter, Huawei gave its chip designs to Sophgo after sanctions prevented it from working with TSMC. Sophgo, in turn, gave the blueprints to TSMC, suggesting they were its own designs. TSMC suspended its shipments to Sophgo after discovering that the compute chiplet it had supplied was part of Huawei's HiSilicon Ascend 910 series. TSMC made ... Read full article.