Intel talks up China chip market 'opportunity' amid U.S. tensions
CEO Pat Gelsinger warns overly strict chip export rules risk spurring Chinese advances
TAIPEI -- Intel wants to supply as many of its chips as it can to China, CEO Pat Gelsinger said on Tuesday, warning that overly strict U.S. export controls would only spur Asia's leading economy to develop its own semiconductors.
"We're continuing to pursue exporting all of our products to China, and we're continuing to make products like Gaudi available," Gelsinger told a press conference at the Computex tech trade show in Taipei on Tuesday. Gaudi chips are Intel's graphic processing units (GPUs) used for artificial intelligence computing.
Washington has progressively tightened its export controls on shipments of advanced chips and chipmaking tools to China in response to alleged national security threats and to rein in Beijing's tech ambitions. The controls affect not only Intel but also competitors AMD and Nvidia, the world's most valuable chipmaker, which is restricted from shipping its powerful GPUs, including the H100 system, to China.
Gelsinger said Intel's technological lead over Chinese rivals who lack access to the most advanced tool can give the U.S. chipmaker a competitive edge in the local market.
Extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV, the most advanced chipmaking technology on the market, is not available in China, he said. "As a result, as we continue to go below 2 nanometers or beyond, there'll be an attractiveness for the Intel products in the China market. And I believe as a result, we'll continue to have a good market opportunity."
"Nanometers" refers to the distance between transistors on a chip. The smaller the number, the more powerful the chip, but also the greater the challenges in producing it.
Gelsinger added, however, that if the U.S. clamps down too firmly on China's chip sector, there was a risk of the move backfiring.
"If that line is too restrictive, then China has to build its own chips," he said.
Washington's progressively tighter export controls on advanced chips and chipmaking tools have resulted in a pattern of companies reengineering popular products with slightly lower specifications in order to continue shipping them to China. U.S. trade officials, however, have said they would crack down on such strategies going forward.
There are signs, meanwhile, that the U.S. crackdown has already spurred advances in China's domestic chipmaking capabilities. Huawei said its Ascend chip performance can match Nvidia's offerings. The Chinese tech champion last year also unveiled the Mate 60 Pro smartphone using its self-developed 7-nanometer chip.
The U.S. revoked export licenses it had granted to Intel and Qualcomm for supplying Huawei after the Chinese tech champion in April unveiled a laptop using Intel's most advanced PC chips to date.