The US Plans To Block Sales of Older Chipmaking Tech To China

The Biden administration will attempt to roll back China's chipmaking abilities by blocking tools that make a widely used type of transistor other chipmakers have employed for years. From a report: The Biden administration has for several months been working to tighten its grip on U.S. exports of technology that China needs to make advanced chips, with the goals of both hurting China's current manufacturing ability and also blocking its future access to next-generation capabilities. According to two people familiar with the administrations plans, President Joe Biden's approach is based around choking off access to the tools, software and support mechanisms necessary to manufacture a specific type of technology that is one of the fundamental building blocks of modern microchips: the transistor. To achieve its objectives, the administration has elected to work to block China's access to transistors that use a specific design called FinFET. The plans include blocking domestic exports of tools that are capable of printing chips with FinFET transistors, while also preventing the tool makers -- such as Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA -- from servicing or supporting equipment they have already sold to various Chinese companies, according to the sources. Big chip manufacturers achieved high-volume production of the transistor technology targeted by the Biden administration roughly eight years ago, but it is still widely used today to manufacture advanced chips designed for servers and iPhones alike. China's largest chipmaker, SMIC, disclosed in 2019 it recently began high-volume production of FinFET-based chips.

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