US to reportedly sanction 200 more Chinese chip firms — high bandwidth memory might also see export bans

The United States (US) government is looking to introduce a new series of sanctions affecting at least 200 domestic chip makers in China, per a report from Reuters. These new regulations came to light in an e-mail by the US Chamber of Commerce to its members – the largest lobbying group in the US – also hinting at a forthcoming ban-hammer on High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) export as well.

For the past couple of years, the US has been engaged in a chip war with China and has recently brought about stringent policies to limit the export of US-soil-manufactured equipment. These policies have not only thrown a wrench in China’s ambitions to rise to the highest ranks in the semiconductor world but also the finances of global players like Nvidia, who are barred from exporting high-performance GPUs to China. Nonetheless, China is ambitiously working hard to achieve a sort of chip-autarky, but that comes with its own set of caveats, as it’d not only have to design its chips but also manufacture them.

The update sheds light on the Biden administration’s recent efforts to impose stricter regulations on chip manufacturers in China. The latest swarm of sanctions reportedly targets roughly 200 Chinese firms. US companies are prohibited from exporting select technologies or products to the targeted firms. The report suggests that the US Department of Commerce aims to push these new regulations before the Thanksgiving break – or November 28. Neither the Department of Commerce nor the Chamber of Commerce responded to Reuters’ request for comments.

Moreover, another wave of sanctions is set to follow in December – targeting the export of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) – primarily to choke China’s advance in the AI domain. The impacts of these restrictions are materializing given that Huawei’s Kirin SoCs and Ascend AI accelerators will reportedly remain stuck at 7nm technology until 2026 as SMIC fails to procure cutting-edge Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) machines from ASML.

Even globally, a handful of giants, such as Intel and Samsung, have their own chip design and chip manufacturing departments. Even then, Intel’s latest processors are being outsourced to TSMC; see Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake. This means that China has to design its chips internally, which is a very complex task in itself, but then has to fabricate chips based on these designs on homegrown wafers from firms like SMIC. Post 7nm technology, overcoming the EUV barrier is compulsory if China is to achieve sub-5nm chip manufacturing capabilities and compete globally.