according to Bloomberg, Taiwan officials raided the office on allegations that China-based Advanced Manufacturing EDA Co. (Amedac) had hired a semiconductor engineer from TSMC without complying with proper regulations. Amedac is co-owned by US-based Synopsys and has been investigated to illegally provide electronic design automation (EDA) tools to Huawei’s HiSilicon and SMIC.
Taiwan Ministry of Justice (MoJ) officials attack Advanced Manufacturing EDA Co., Ltd. In March, we looked for evidence that the company hired personnel from TSMC to develop its own EDA software. Investigators are investigating Amedak’s employment practices and there are no charges at this time. Taiwan is essentially banning the hiring of employees from key industries such as semiconductor manufacturing by Chinese tech companies in order not to help China drive the chip manufacturing industry.
Taiwan and Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not only the fact that China is gaining the power of semiconductors, but also the fact that people hired by companies like TSMC share company secrets / proprietary technology with China-based employers. I am also interested in the fact that it can be shared. At that time, TSMC sued SMIC for stealing the manufacturing process. Currently, copying complex FinFET-based production nodes is nearly impossible, but no one wants to take the risk.
EDA tools are also a major concern. There are thousands of chip design companies and local chip producers in China, but they don’t have the EDA tools needed to develop chips. As a result, both companies were hit hard in 2020 when the US government basically left HiSilicon and SMIC without the new EDA software. As a result, it is clear that Chinese companies need locally developed electronic design automation software.
Founded in September 2019, Amedac has developed EDA tools and is based in Hefei, China. Synopsys, one of the world’s largest producers of EDA software, owns a 20% stake in the company, with the remaining stakes being SummitView Capital, CEC Huada Electronic Design Co., and Micro of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Electronics Laboratory (a government-sponsored organization).
Synopsys maintains a distributor relationship with Amedac and states that it can resell the tool to a variety of customers. On the other hand, according to EDA experts, Amedac does not have the actual technology from Synopsys.
