Effectiveness of Anti-China Chip Rules in Doubt

EE Times ^

[FarCenter]

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The U.S. plans to implement the controls with its international partners under a pact dating back to the Cold War known as the Wassenaar Arrangement.

The new rule has been “coordinated via the Wassenaar Agreement, so it would be multilateral in nature,” Triolo said. “In terms of companies that could be affected, for this particular rule, it is the EDA tool makers that would be most affected, here Cadence, Synopsis, and Mentor. However, the wording of the rule remains unclear, and as written, the industry is pushing back because it is not clear that advanced versions of EDA tools can have GAA capabilities disaggregated from the overall software package.”

“No EDA tool is designed in such a way that GAA FET design capability can be separated out,” he added. “It is not clear exactly how this restriction would work.”

The U.S. controls a wider range of technologies, including equipment, software, and technology used to make chips, beyond the items agreed upon in the Wassenaar Arrangement, according to the BIS. The U.S. is home to the world’s largest suppliers of chipmaking equipment, companies including Applied Materials and Lam Research.

Those companies count on China for a large part of their sales. For example, Lam Research said in its latest quarterly results that China makes up about 31% of its revenue.

“Look at the revenue of leading U.S. companies like Applied Materials, Lam, KLA, plus Cadence, Synopsis, and Mentor, and how much of their revenue is from China,” Triolo says. “Implementing the controls has proven to be challenging because the export-control system was not designed for these types of companies or technologies, but for weapons of mass destruction-related technologies—which are much easier to define and for which a smaller number of companies are involved, without the global and complex supply chains at stake here.”

[SunkenCiv]

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