芯片行業應對美國對中國銷售的新限制

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

Chip industry grapples with new U.S. curbs on China sales

Sat, October 8, 2022 at 1:05 AM

By Stephen Nellis and Jane Lanhee Lee

(Reuters) -Companies around the world on Friday began to wrestle with the impact of wide-ranging U.S. curbs on selling chips and chip manufacturing equipment to China.

The sweeping rules have hit chip stocks, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (.SOX) falling nearly 6% by the end of the day. American semiconductor equipment makers Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp were all down more than 4%.

Applied Materials said it was assessing the new rules, while Lam and KLA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

South Korean memory chip maker SK Hynix Inc said on Friday it would seek a license under new U.S. export control rules for equipment to keep operating its factories in China.

American officials on Friday published a sweeping set of rules that restrict the export of some U.S.-made semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, but provided exemptions for companies from the United States and its allies to seek a license.

"SK Hynix is ready to make its utmost efforts to get the U.S. government's license and will closely work with the Korean government for this," the company said in a statement. "We're also ready to operate our fabrication plants in China smoothly, while complying with the international order."

Officials on Friday also introduced rules against selling a broad swath of chips for any use in "supercomputer" systems in China. Supercomputers can be used in developing nuclear weapons and other military technologies. U.S. companies Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc both said last month they had been told to stop exporting their top-tier chips to China.

The rules define a supercomputer as any system with 100 or more petaflops of so-called double precision computing power, or 200-plus petaflops of single precision computing power, within a 41,600 cubic feet area. A petaflop is a measure of a computer's processing speed.

Nvidia, which said last month the rules could affect $400 million of its current-quarter sales in China, said Friday it did not expect any further impact on its business.

"These regulations impose on the broader industry controls on processors meeting certain thresholds that we were already subject to. We don't expect the new controls, including restrictions on sales for highly dense systems, to have a material impact on our business," the company said in a statement.

AMD did not respond to a request for comment.

 (Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Jane Lanhee Lee in Oakland; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Richard Chang)

Translation

（路透社）- 週五，世界各地的公司開始努力應對美國向中國出售芯片和芯片製造設備的廣泛限制的影響。

全方位的法例打擊了芯片股，費城半導體指數 (.SOX) 在當天收盤時下跌了近 6%。美國半導體設備製造商 Lam Research Corp、Applied Materials Inc 和 KLA Corp 均下跌超過 4%。

Applied Materials表示正在評估新法例，而 Lam 和 KLA 沒有立即回應置評請求。

韓國存儲芯片製造商 SK Hynix Inc 周五表示，將根據美國新的出口管制規則尋求設備上的許可証，以繼續在中國運營其工廠。

美國官員周五公佈了一套全面的法例，限制部分美國製造的半導體製造設備向中國出口，但為美國及其盟國的公司發出許可證提供了豁免。

SK Hynix在一份聲明中表示: “SK Hynix準備盡最大努力獲得美國政府的許可，並將為此與韓國政府密切合作”; “我們也準備好在中國順利運營我們的製造工廠，同時遵守國際秩序。”

週五，官員們還出台了規定，禁止在中國銷售大量用於 “超級計算機”系統的芯片。超級計算機可用於開發核武器和其他軍事技術。美國公司 Nvidia Corp 和 Advanced Micro Devices Inc 上個月都表示，他們已被告知停止向中國出口其頂級芯片。

這些規則將超級計算機定義為任何系統, 在 41,600 立方英尺的區域內具有 100 或更多的petaflop即所謂雙精度計算能力; 或單一台有 200 個petaflops或以上有精度計算能力的系統。 Petaflop 是衡量計算機處理速度的指標。

Nvidia上個月曾表示這些規定可能會影響其當前季度在中國的 4 億美元銷售額，週五表示，預計這不會對其業務產生任何進一步影響。

公司在一份聲明中說: “這些法規對我們對處理器已滿足地遵守的某些門檻施加更廣泛的行業控制。我們預計新的控制措施，包括對高密度系統的銷售限制，不會對我們的業務產生重大影響” 。 

AMD 沒有回應置評請求。

       So, companies around the world wrestle with the impact of wide-ranging U.S. curbs on selling chips and chip manufacturing equipment to China. I am expecting that China will speed up its research and development in making their own high-powered computer processors. Yet, this will take time and money to proceed, to say the least. Chips production is one of the competing fields between China and the US.