US Targets China's Chip Industry with New Restrictions

• The United States on Monday launched its third big crackdown in three years on China's semiconductor industry, curbing exports to 140 companies, including chip equipment maker Naura Technology Group, among other moves.
• New controls will be placed on semiconductor manufacturing equipment needed to produce advanced-node integrated circuits, including certain etch, deposition, lithography, ion implantation, annealing, metrology and inspection, and cleaning tools.
• Additionally, there will be new controls on software tools for developing or producing advanced-node integrated circuits, including certain software that increases the productivity of advanced machines or allows less-advanced machines to produce advanced chips.
• The new rule will expand U.S. powers to curb exports of chipmaking equipment by U.S., Japanese, and Dutch manufacturers made in other parts of the world to certain chip plants in China.
• Another rule in the package restricts high bandwidth memory used in AI chips that correspond with what is known as "HBM 2" and higher, technology made by South Korea's Samsung and SK Hynix and U.S.-based Micron Technology.
• Industry sources expect only Samsung Electronics to be affected. Analysts estimate Samsung generates about 30% of its HBM chip sales from China. HBM is critical to both AI training and inference at scale and is a key component of advanced computing integrated circuits.
• The 140 new entrants on the Commerce Department's Entity List include semiconductor fabrication plants, also known as fabs, semiconductor tool companies, and investment companies "that are acting at the behest of Beijing to further China's advanced chip goals which pose a risk to U.S. and allied national security."

(Source: Reuters)