Chinese chipmaker SMIC accused of copying TSMC’s 7 nanometers

The veto of Chinese companies by the US meant that many technology companies in that country were left without access to the latest generation chips from TSMC, Intel or Samsung, for example. The Asian giant began to prioritize the development of chips in its own companies such as SMIC, although its manufacturing nodes were still light years away from those of leading Western companies.

Now, SMIC has started shipping its first 7-nanometer chips, a very big jump considering that the company was still manufacturing at 14 nanometers and that recently, just a few months, since it announced that it would begin to go down to smaller processes. On the other hand, SMIC does not have access to the most advanced EUV machinery from AMSL (who creates the machinery for the major chipmakers).

The alarms have gone off, and according to the analyst company TechInsights, after reverse engineering SMIC’s 7-nanometer chips. After the first analyses, They claim that it is a copy of TSMC’s 7-nanometer technology.

It would not be the first time that the Chinese company is sued by TSMC for illegally copying their processes, so expect further court battles in the future if intellectual property theft is confirmed.

However, according to the analysts themselves, SMIC’s 7nm process is two nodes behind those made by Samsung, TSMC or Intel at 7 nanometers (don’t forget that the nanometer nomenclature is somewhat misleading). These chips, at least for now, are intended to give life to different mining equipment of cryptocurrencies, some ASICs with more relaxed requirements in terms of memory management

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