The Chinese firm ByteDance, owner of TikTok, would be working with the American company Broadcom in the development of an “advanced AI processor” whose manufacturing would, in turn, be in charge of the Taiwanese company TSMC, according to ‘Reuters’ this Monday in exclusive.
The five-nanometer microchip, a customized product known as an application-specific integrated chip (ASIC), would respect restrictions on the import of high-performance processors imposed by the United States to slow Chinese progress in the field of supercomputing.
In this sense, this collaboration would be the first between companies from the Asian giant and North America around chips of five or less nanometers since these controls came into force in 2022.
The agreement between ByteDance and Broadcom would help guarantee a stable supply of high-end chips and “drastically” reduce their acquisition costs for the multinational that operates not only TikTok, but also services such as Douyin, the Chinese version of the famous short video social network, or the Toutiao news platform.
In any case, the sources consulted have indicated that TSMC is not expected to start manufacturing the chip this year. In fact, although the design work would be “very advanced”, the ‘tapeout’, that is the end of the design phase and the beginning of manufacturing, would not have begun.
