‘US must completely ban exports of American technology to SMIC and Huawei’

The US must nip all forms of exports to Huawei and SMIC in the bud. That’s what an American legislator demands. It was recently announced that the Chinese SMIC supplies the SoC for the Huawei Mate 60 Pro, even though this probably violates the trade restrictions imposed by the US.

According to Republican Mike Gallagher, the advanced Kirin 9000s SoC of the Mate 60 Pro “probably could not have been produced without using American technology” and therefore would have violated US export restrictions. writes Reuters. The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, also says according to Bloomberg that it ‘appears’ as if SMIC has violated US sanctions.

Gallagher therefore calls for a complete ban on all forms of US technology exports to both Huawei and SMIC. This “to make it clear that any company that undermines our law and national security will be isolated from our technology.”

Huawei was put on the so-called entity list by the US in December 2019. Since then, suppliers must obtain government permission to trade with the Chinese tech company. Some companies, such as Qualcomm and Intel, are currently still allowed to supply technology that is not related to 5G to Huawei under certain conditions. Even stricter export restrictions were introduced last year for the export of advanced chips and chip production equipment. Companies that want to export such chips or machines to Chinese companies must now apply for a permit. SMIC, among others, was put on a blacklist, effectively blocking the export of such machines to that company.

TechInsides discovered this week during a teardown that the Huawei Mate 60 Pro probably used American technology without permission. It turned out that the phone’s Kirin 9000s SoC is based on SMIC’s N+2 7nm process. Although it is unknown which production machines SMIC uses, these probably include high-quality immersion lithography machines from ASML.