Samsung memory found inside Huawei's secretive new AI chip

Chip export controls on China have limited the country's ability to not just source advanced AI chips but also produce them locally. Its access to the latest chipmaking technology is heavily restricted, but leading Chinese companies are trying to find their way around them.

It has been known for long that Huawei was discreetly working on a new AI chip that could take on NVIDIA's AI accelerators. A new report reveals the company smuggled TSMC dies and used Samsung's HBM chips to develop its Ascend 910C AI chip.

Bloomberg reports that despite export restrictions, Huawei was able to secure TSMC dies to manufacture nearly three million Ascend AI chips through a shell company. This ended up being very expensive for TSMC as it was fined $1 billion for the leaked die that found its way to China.

The report further mentions that the die is packaged with previous generation high-bandwidth memory chips from both Samsung and SK Hynix. Chinese companies were reportedly stockpiling HBM like crazy before export controls were applied to memory chips as well.

Chinese companies still don't have access to the latest generation of memory chips and the ones they stockpiled are running out. Companies are now reportedly de-soldering memory chips from loosely packaged products manufactured precisely for sanctions evasion.

Despite these efforts, Chinese companies still face a monumental challenge in producing enough AI chips to meet domestic demand. The report estimates that Huawei may only be able to produce a million units of its AI chips next year due to the die and HBM shortage.