The new Cold War » China's Big Fund | The CHIPS Act | America's fab renaissance | Roots of the conflict | The impact in 2023 | The impact in 2022
Semiconductors power everything from PCs and data centers to cars, lightbulbs, and refrigerators. Control over their manufacture means control over billions of dollars and the world economy -- and the US, China, Taiwan, and others are waging a geopolitical battle for exactly that. Welcome to the chip war.
Major moments
Mar. 9, 2024: China is assembling the third phase of its Big Fund investment in semiconductor projects, a $27 billion investment to counter U.S. sanctions.
Jan. 27, 2024: The Department of Commerce (DOC) introduced a proposal to prevent foreign entities, particularly from China, from using U.S. cloud computing for AI model training, a new level to the conflict.
Nov. 02, 2023: The Nvidia RTX 4090 -- The fastest gaming GPU -- will no longer be available for export to China starting Nov. 17.
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Oct. 24, 2023: The DOC sped up the implementation of its latest export curbs, immediately blocking Nvidia from shipping A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S GPUs to China.
Oct. 7, 2023: Senators Marco Rubio and Mark Warner demand a limit to China's access to American RISC-V innovations.
Aug. 10, 2023: President Joe Biden signed an executive order restricting U.S. investments in Chinese tech sectors, including AI, semiconductors, and quantum computing.
Aug. 01, 2022: The U.S. extended its ban on chipmaking equipment produced by domestic firms that are sold to Chinese companies.
Dec. 18, 2020: The DOC blacklisted SMIC along with 60 other Chinese companies citing ties with the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
Latest about chip war
US investigates China's access to RISC-V — open standard instruction set may become new site of US-China chip war
U.S. lawmakers again review the risks of China's access to powerful chips through the RISC-V standard, an open-source ISA that wants to remain open to all.
US sanctions transform China into legacy chip production juggernaut
China's legacy chip production has skyrocketed since U.S. export sanctions took effect. In Q1 2024, China's legacy chip production was three times what it was in Q1 2019.
US gov't working on list of Chinese fabs banned from advanced chipmaking tools as China's stockpiling spree continues
The U.S. government is prepping a list of fabs in China that will be barred from getting advanced chipmaking tools.
AMD lists mystery MI388X AI GPU in official docs, says it's barred from China sales due to US sanctions
AMD lists a mystery MI388X AI GPU in official docs as barred from China sales.
China's chipmaking tool purchases skyrocket — imports up 256% in the face of intensifying U.S. sanctions
Chinese companies accelerate procurement of ASML's litho tools in January and February.
Lenovo says demand for AMD's Instinct MI300 is record high
Lenovo wants to offer servers based on processors from every player around, not including AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
U.S. outlines five-year plan to harness CHIPS Act funds
The National Science and Technology Council has published its five-year strategy to make the most of the CHIPS Act.
China filed 25% more patents than the U.S. in 2023 — heavily sanctioned Huawei led all companies
Huawei and China led WIPO's patent filers list in 2023 as they accelerated technology development.
