Experts from two of Taiwan’s top research institutions say the United States’ new restrictions on semiconductor exports to China will have only a small effect on Taiwanese suppliers.
News of the restrictions emerged on Wednesday, when US chipmaker Nvidia said US officials told it to stop selling two top computing chips to China. According to Nvidia, the new licensing requirements aim to stop the chips from reaching “military end user[s]” in China and Russia. The two chips in question, Nvidia’s A100 and upcoming H100 chips, are used in supercomputers, data centers for artificial intelligence and data analytics.
Another industry giant, AMD, told Reuters it will be subject to similar licensing requirements.
Taiwan is a global leader in semiconductor production. But local experts say the new US rules will not have a serious impact on the industry or its biggest supplier — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC).
Liu Pei-chen from the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research says TSMC will quickly adapt to new regulations, just like it did when US authorities sanctioned the Chinese tech company Huawei. She says Huawei was one of TSMC’s biggest customers, but despite the sanctions, the Taiwanese chip manufacturer’s profits grew by 18% that year.
Ray Yang from the Industrial Technology Research Institute says the affected products are only a small segment of the market, so the impact of changes on TSMC will be limited.
Other experts say that TSMC has a diverse client base. They say that will help further soften the impact of the new US rules.