Why is ARM allowed to design chips with Xiaomi?
Because ARM is not a US company.
It’s more complicated than that. Arm is still subject to US sanctions because they use US tech.
There’s this whole drama with Arm China, which was effectively stolen from Arm’s control. I haven’t followed it super closely in recent years but here’s some recent news
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/arm-wants-to...
Are you gonna tell them not to?
Taped* out.
Weird typo--the article even says "For starters, if the chip is sent for tape out it means that the design is ready and it is handed over to the manufacturing partner for a small trial production..."
It's (almost) like who/whatever is writing the story doesn't actually understand the context.
What does 3nm mean here? As far as I know, these are just marketing terms with no basis in physical reality. With Chinese firms, I am even more skeptical than with typical marketing.
You’re right, it doesn’t mean anything related to a physical dimension. Its sole purpose is to show shrinkage (in terms of density) compared to the previous generation.
That being said, assuming that the Chinese “3nm” is comparable to the rest of the industry’s nodes, I highly doubt they can make it. “7nm” is/was the last node size that could be produced without EUV (while still economically viable). And that was with multiple-patterning on Immersion scanners.
China doesn’t and can’t have EUV. They do have Immersion, but that’s now also under export controls.
Well they only can’t have euv because of the Netherlands. Depending what the eu or the USA does the Netherlands can stop listening to the USA.
Idk what incentive they would have to do that given iirc they’re selling basically every EUV machine they can make right now?
I believe EUV was licensed to ASML since it came out of a defense department research project. So the US probably does have a say for machines that use EUV.
Well maybe. But without further experimentation it would probably not that viable. It also needs a lot of tech which is also developed by a European company, that has basically 90% of that market. And know the us has a president that is not eu friendly, we will See what happens.
> China doesn’t and can’t have EUV.
Famous last words. /s
Everyone else is missing the point here. SMIC (China’s main semi fab) isn’t the company manufacturing these chips. They haven’t broken into anything close to 3nm-class chips yet. This just means that TSMC is going to manufacture a 3nm chip for Xiaomi. The important part for China here is this proves that they can design modern chips, not they necessarily have the manufacturing capability yet.
How likely is it that TSMC will manufacture it in the current political climate?
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