The US government is escalating its crackdown on China’s leading chipmaker, SMIC, after discovering that the company had supplied a state-of-the-art chip for Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro smartphone, which defied US sanctions on the Chinese tech behemoth and debuted in 2023.
Reuters reported, citing three sources who knew the details, that the Commerce Department had sent letters to several US vendors of SMIC, withdrawing their authorization to export certain products to SMIC’s most sophisticated facility, dubbed SMIC South. The move is intended to block SMIC from accessing more American technology that could enable it to produce more advanced chips for Huawei or other Chinese clients.
The report also revealed that SMIC is preparing to manufacture a 5nm Kirin processor for Huawei’s next-generation smartphones, which could compete with the performance of the latest chips from Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, which are based on 3nm and 4nm technologies, respectively.
Following the Mate 60 Pro’s spectacular launch, the Commerce Department reportedly dispatched numerous letters to US suppliers of SMIC, halting their sales of US high-tech products to SMIC’s most sophisticated plant, according to two sources who requested anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly about it.
While many firms had already ceased selling to SMIC South, as the unit is called, the letters stopped millions of dollars worth of deliveries of chipmaking materials and components from at least one supplier, Entegris, one of the sources said. The Reuters report explicitly stated that it had found “no proof that Entegris had breached any U.S. laws or regulations.”.
Entegris, which produces the essential components for making chips: filters, gases, chemicals, and products for handling wafers, said it followed a valid export license for the shipments and stopped them after receiving letters from the Commerce Department prohibiting them from sending products to SMIC South.
Entegris stated that it adheres to the “rapidly changing regulatory requirements” for international trade that affect the chip industry.