Taiwanese chipset company TSMC discovered that some of its chips ended up at Huawei, according to an insider who spoke to Bloomberg. The report revealed that a third-party customer supplied chipsets to the sanctioned Chinese company, which equipped its AI servers with said processors.
The information comes days after a report indicated that the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security had begun an investigation into possible violations of U.S. export controls.
TSMC issued a statement saying it is a “law-abiding company” committed to complying with all rules and regulations, including applicable export controls. In a separate statement, Huawei said it has not produced TSMC chips since the company was blacklisted by the US Department of Commerce in 2020.
The client was not named in the report due to the “sensitive” nature of the issue. It is also unclear whether it was acting on behalf of Huawei or where it is based; the report simply confirmed previous information that TSMC chips power AI servers that Huawei uses to develop its artificial intelligence models.
The Huawei Mate 60 Pro motherboard with Korean memory and 5 nm chipset
Huawei currently uses 7nm chips from SMIC, although the capabilities of making such a SoC on a large scale are also being questioned by US officials. The Chinese maker has managed to stock a number of chipsets that TSMC made in 2019, the Kirin 910, and we’ve seen modifications of it appear in products for years later.