In April, TSMC used to be offered with $6.6 billion in explain CHIPS Act funding to “support TSMC’s investment of more than $65 billion in three greenfield leading-edge fabs in Phoenix, Arizona, which will manufacture the world’s most advanced semiconductors,” the Division of Commerce stated.
These investments are key to the Biden-Harris administration’s mission of strengthening “economic and national security by providing a reliable domestic supply of the chips that will underpin the future economy, powering the AI boom and other fast-growing industries like consumer electronics, automotive, Internet of Things, and high-performance computing,” the department popular. And in explicit, the funding will support America “maintain our competitive edge” in artificial intelligence, the department stated.
It seemingly would no longer win sense to prop TSMC up to support the US “onshore the critical hardware manufacturing capabilities that underpin AI’s deep language learning algorithms and inferencing techniques,” to then restrict entry to US-made tech. TSMC’s Arizona fabs are speculated to make stronger companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm and permit them to “compete effectively,” the Division of Commerce stated.
Currently, it be unclear the place the US probe into TSMC will walk or whether a damaging finding would possibly maybe potentially affect TSMC’s CHIPS funding.
Finest descend, the Division of Commerce published a last ruleeven though, designed to “prevent CHIPS funds from being used to directly or indirectly benefit foreign countries of concern,” such as China.
If the US suspected that TSMC used to be assisting Huawei’s AI chip manufacturing, the company would possibly maybe perhaps be perceived as averting CHIPS guardrails prohibiting TSMC from “knowingly engaging in any joint research or technology licensing effort with a foreign entity of concern that relates to a technology or product that raises national security concerns.”
Violating this “technology clawback” provision of the last rule dangers “the full amount” of CHIPS Act funding being “recovered” by the Division of Commerce. That appears to be like to be no longer going, even though, provided that TSMC has been awarded more funding than every other recipient rather than Intel.
The Division of Commerce declined Ars’ anticipate of to impart on whether TSMC’s CHIPS Act funding would possibly maybe perhaps be impacted by their reported probe.
