TSMC halts production of 7nm GPU chips for Chinese start-up company Biren Technology
TSMC halts the production of GPU chips for China’s Biren Technology
The U.S. Commerce Department last month expressed a goal to “keep advanced technologies out of the wrong hands.” China called it a “tech blockade.” At the same time, commerce ministry spokesperson Shu Jieting said that “the U.S. continues to abuse export control measures to restrict exports of semiconductor-related items to China, which China firmly opposes.”
TSMC itself isn’t sure that Biren’s chips are covered by U.S. regulations but has decided to halt production of them anyway. Biren, of course, says that its AI chips are not covered by U.S. export restrictions. A TSMC spokesperson made a limited statement noting that the foundry complies with all relevant rules. The U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced new semiconductor restrictions on October 7th.
Biren Technology’s BR100 GPU is said to be 2.8 times faster than the NVIDIA A100 GPU
A spokesperson for the U.S. Commerce Department said, “While BIS cannot comment on company-specific actions, we expect all companies to comply with export controls. Since the release of the rule on October 7, BIS has been undertaking a vigorous outreach effort to educate those impacted by it to aid compliance efforts.”
One of the Biren GPU chips that TSMC was going to produce for the company was the BR100 GPU which manufactured using TSMC’s 7nm process node and features 77 billion transistors in each chipset. This particular component was said to be 2.8 times faster than Nvidia’s A100.
