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AMD and Nvidia Silicon Manufacturing Secrets Allegedly Stolen, Sold To China (pcgamesn.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the chamber-of-secrets dept.

According to a report on DigiTimes, a former TSMC engineer has been accused of stealing the secrets of their 28nm manufacturing process and taking them across the Taiwan Straits to Chinese rival, HLMC. "The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produce the chips for the great and the good of the PC hardware market, specifically Nvidia and latterly AMD," reports PCGamesN. From the report: The report claims the former engineer, known only as Hsu, has been accused of taking details and materials relating to TSMC's 28nm manufacturing process and handing them over to Shanghai Huali Microelectronics (HLMC) after being offered a job there. The engineer was arrested before he even had a chance to start his new job on mainland China. This isn't the first reported instance of potentially shady dealings involving HLMC. DigiTimes previously reported that the Chinese foundry had headhunted a team of up to 50 research and development engineers from Taiwan's first semiconductor company, United Microelectronics (UMC), to help them get their 28nm production process up to speed. DigiTimes also alleges that some Chinese memory manufacturers have been doing the same thing, headhunting Taiwanese talent to get their own fabs off the ground, and that Micron are taking legal action against some of their Taiwan partners for allegedly nicking their tech and handing it over to China-based RAM companies.

2 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This keeps happening by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'd rather say because expenssive - and that's it.

    Western products are too expenssive to justify the amount of money to spend on them. Starting from the same chinese produced item, the cost is much higher here, sometimes double or even trible of what it costs at chinese online shops. Next is the fact that pretty much any product, you can't trust that paying more actually brings any quality improvements, quarantees are not respected (hello Apple) and consumer protection does not work.

    Chinese products break, because they are produced as cheaply as possible, western products break because they are engineered to break.

    I've lost all faith.

  2. Re: This keeps happening by fubarrr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    >Chinese products break, because they are produced as cheaply as possible, western products break because they are engineered to break.

    No, no, no man. I once worked in electronics OEMs. I assure you, all shit requests to "strip the product to the last cent" come from Western buyers: HP, Best Buy, Dell (those guy have massively improved once Michael Dell kicked out flowchart warriors,) Bang and Olufsen, Google (their bundled usb chargers were some of the crappiest on the market tech-wise around 2012)

    Chinese domestic makers are faaaaar more concerned with issues of high return rate since they don't have marketing power to run on high margins. For a factory that survives with single digit margins, a 10% return rate means they are in loss, some times in a tripple digit loss. No, they will better up-rate all components, and materials than risk having returns and potential blacklisting by QC agents.