The goal of the sanctions is to make China have to build super computers with slow nodes than the West can while still using products sold by US companies. It's not to cut off China completely and accelerate their technological independence.
Bingo.
As seen with prior sanctions (e.g. semiconductor fab equipment, backhaul networking equipment, etc, the same has occurred in many other market segments) total restrictions stimulate creation of a domestic capability by necessity, which both permanently removes a control mechanism that can be used today or in the future
and diverts money that would have gone to foreign companies back to domestic ones.
The tightrope to walk is to make buying foreign items
more competitive than developing domestic ones (because that requires upfront investment and a period of learning to get propducts up to being directly competitive) but still being
less competitive than foreign customers can be buying those same items. If you make the 'export version' too crap, then a domestic version becomes a competitive alternative even if worse. If you restrict too much, a domestic capability is the only option. If you restrict too little, then you 'risk' having to compete on a more even playing field.
Any "reasonable" sanction is going to be hard to write for effectiveness.
Developing a new product that falls within the strict guidelines of the law is not "skirting" sanctions. But it may very well weaken them since it appears that the rules may have been written with the existing products in mind.
By tying sanction thresholds to die area, that adds a measure of 'future proofing': If you move to a new process or create chips that are more efficient per unit area (e.g. through clock speed increases or ICP improvements), you then have to add dark die area to stay under the threshold (chips are now more expensive and thus less competitive per unit performance) or hobble performance by some other mechanism (same effect).
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram