The US government’s plan to widen the scope of its restrictions on the sale of US-made IC chips and production equipment to China would have only a limited effect on Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said yesterday.

Liu, a Taiwan Industry Economics Database researcher at the institute, said the planned restrictions would force Chinese chipmakers to shift their focus to mature technologies, as they would likely face difficulty obtaining equipment required for the production of advanced chips.

China’s increased focus on mature processes would not hurt Taiwan, as Taiwanese chipmakers are competitive in the field and have achieved high yield rates, she said.

The nation’s semiconductor industry would not be pressured by more Chinese chipmakers using mature processes, Liu added.

Her comments followed a Reuters report on Monday that Washington would next month broaden the scope of its restrictions on US exports of semiconductor production equipment to Chinese firms that manufacture advanced chips using sub-14-nanometer processes.

The restrictions would apply to KLA Corp, Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc, it said.

The companies would need to obtain permission from the US Department of Commerce before exporting advanced chip production equipment to China, the report said.

Pegatron Corp (和碩) chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢) said the planned curbs are an extension of the trade dispute between Washington and Beijing.

The planned restrictions would not cause the kind of shock that rattled the markets in July 2018, when the administration of then-US president Donald Trump imposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on US$34 billion of Chinese imports, sparking the dispute, Tung said.

The commerce department last month sent letters to US IC designers Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), ordering them to halt shipments of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China without government permission, the Reuters report said.

Liu said the ban would have a limited effect on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as Nvidia and AMD sell products other than AI chips to their Chinese customers.

TSMC was similarly unaffected by the sanctions Washington placed on China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) on Sept. 15, 2020, she said.

The chipmaker achieved this by adopting flexible sales strategies and the void left by the missing Huawei orders was quickly filled by other customers, Liu said.

 

• Link ：By TAIPEI TIMES