Malaysia is planning to exacerbate the Semiconduct regulationsi, as under pressure from the United States who want to stem the illegal flow towards China of crucial chips for the development of the artificial intelligence.
The Minister of Commerce of the Asian country Zafrul Aziz has in fact revealed to the Financial Times that Washington is asking the Malaysia to monitor the movement of the high -end nvidia chip who enter the country, since it suspects that many of the semiconductors end up in China, in violation of the US rules on exports.
For this reason, a task force has been formed with the Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo to unexpected the regulations relating to the flourishing sector of Malaysia Data Centerwhich is based on the chips of the leader of the Nvidia sector.
“The US – said Aziz – ask us to monitor each shipment that arrives in Malaysia when it comes to NVIDIA chips, as they want to make sure the servers end up in the expected data centers and are not suddenly moved to another ‘ship’ “. The United States imposed Export controls of advanced semiconductors and related equipment in an attempt to hinder the development by China of new generation technologies, including the IA, which could have military applications. The office of Nvidia In Singapore it represents almost a Fourth of global saleswhich makes Washington suspect that some of the chips are filtering in China.
Zoful reported that the US authorities suspect that Nvidia chips ended up in China after passing through Malaysia. But he also specified that the investigations did not find evidence that the chips arrived at the Malaysian Data Center to which they would be sold.
The growing role of Malaysia
Malaysia has become one of the most rapid growth markets for data center development, largely concentrated in Johor’s southern state. In the last 18 months the state has attracted beyond 25 billion dollars of investments From companies such as Nvidia, Microsoft and Bytedance, owner of Tiktok, for the construction of Data Center, and recently agreed to form one Special economic area with Singapore.
Zoful stressed the difficulty of tracing semiconductors through global supply chains, involving chip producers, suppliers and buyers, as well as companies involved in the production and distribution of server.
“The United States are also exerting strong pressures on their companies to assume the responsibility to ensure that the products arrive at the planned destination,” he said.