export compliance is a total absolute tire fire, its full of non-sensical policy, and contrary opinions, and the more countries your product goes thru, the worse it gets.
Have a part made in Japan, integrated into a product in the states but sold by someone in the UK to in France? you'll have to comply with Japan, US and UK laws.
Neat fact, the UK considers the Cisco C9200 switch to be a munition, because it has ipsec.
It's not only the UK that considers cryptography to be a munition. It is also classified as munitions in the US:
> Encryption items specifically designed, developed, configured, adapted or modified for military applications (including command, control and intelligence applications) are controlled by the Department of State on the United States Munitions List.
It was part of the whole crypto wars, and the lawsuit brought by Bernstein vs the United States.
In New York, the Mob likes to control trucking and rail transport, because it allows them to get their fingers into anyone’s business.
Very easy to have a truck make a 20-minute detour into a hidden depot, where the contents are “inspected.” I know folks that used to work for those types of outfits, and the stories I’ve heard, tell me that the wiseguys are very smart. They know how to get around pretty much any tracking and verification system.
The more people have their hands on the product, the more likely it is to “fall off the truck.”
Then they probably also know when to keep their mitts off something that would definitely attract FBI attention. Or have I been watching too many cop shows ?
Probably, but there’s a lot of money to be made, and it’s likely a risk they may be willing to take.
I was just hearing one of those stories, yesterday, about how someone figured out how to grab bespoke suits.
The prescription drug industry is a good (bad?) example.
Drug production is heavily regulated, as is final distribution (pharmacists), but intermediate distribution (bulk freight), is not. That’s where a lot of prescription medicine falls off trucks.
Yes, anyone exporting anywhere needs to follow compliance rules, because the point is to ensure that all exporters are in compliance.
Consider the OP's example:
> Have a part made in Japan, integrated into a product in the states but sold by someone in the UK to in France? you'll have to comply with Japan, US and UK laws.
The reason all countries tediously ensure their laws are being followed is because, if they weren't, there'd be an obvious legal loophole: you could simply proxy export items to a country with different export restrictions -- and then all export restrictions would be worthless.
These chips could have been manufactured by TSMC before the US issued an export ban:
> It is unclear how the chip made its way to Huawei. In 2019, the company released its Ascend 910 chip series. At the time, prior to export controls, the chips were produced by TSMC, two sources told Reuters earlier this year.
The question of why the US has the right or power to tell TSMC, a Taiwanese company, who it is allowed to do business often comes up in these discussions. I've often seen the response that this is US technology, and that any country would apply similar controls to its own technologies. What I don't think people realize is that these sorts of "secondary" controls are very unusual, internationally.
The US imposes controls on goods manufactured abroad using US-made tools or intellectual property. This is a bit like the way that the GPL "infects" other projects, and forces them to abide by its terms, and to my knowledge, the US is the only country that does this (in any case, it's the only country doing this on such a large scale). If you think of how integrated the world economy is, these sorts of "infectious" controls are extremely disruptive.
Exactly this...and since the US is by far the biggest revenue source for semiconductors it would be stupid to ignore this rule. Taiwan in general wants to maintain favor with the US because of the invasion threat of China as well (although I'm not 100% confident the US would get involved in that fight).
I guess this doesn't take into account semiconductors that go to China to be used in devices manufactured there, and then sold to other countries? I'd have thought that wealthy and IT-heavy USA together with other countries in the Americas (1B people) are buying more end products with semiconductors than China. Also, Europe (wealthy 9% of world pop) probably buys more semiconductors (in end products) than 11%.
US sanctions go far beyond that. As I said, US sanctions are designed to be highly "infectious," so that activities that don't seem to have any US connection fall under the US sanctions regime.
The world economy is tightly interconnected, so almost any economic activity anywhere on Earth has at least some incidental, indirect connection to the US (and to China, and to the EU). Imposing such a wide-ranging secondary sanctions regime is extremely disruptive, and it's viewed by other countries as an attack on their sovereignty. When Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, he effectively forced the EU to also renege on the deal, because US sanctions banned virtually every EU company from doing business with Iran. The EU could no longer determine its own trade and foreign policy with Iran.
The answer to this is probably for other countries that want to retain their sovereignty to impose retaliatory sanctions on the US when it targets their companies. The EU is not sufficiently politically unified to do this, though, and most other countries/blocs (except for China) don't have the heft to go one-on-one against the US.
The issue is that the US has used sanctions dishonestly in the past as a way to remove competitors from markets it's planning to let its own companies take over at a later point. Fully trusting the US is foolish. It's a fickle ally.
Why would it want to ? They're export-driven : becoming a reserve currency is not in their interest. The RMB would appreciate and hurt their competitiveness. Plus, they wouldn't be able to control/drive its value down once it has spread over their border. They paradoxically need to be mostly self-reliant and therefore grow their consumer-base before that happen otherwise they're just putting their fingers in the cogs.
China upstart phase when they viewed themselves as purely export-driven to shore up their economy is over. They now think of themselves as a global power with an internal market deep enough to sustain their own growth and deep tie with countries in Africa and South East Asia with which they would rather do business in their own currency as a way to shore up their depencies towards them.
You are confusing current China with China a decade ago.
Taiwan has the same right as any state to tell any other state to go fly a kite, and TSMC has the same right as any vendor to tell any customer to go fly a kite. Perhaps they are not a 15 year old boy and think about ramifications before saying something like that.
GPL doesn't infect anything any more than any other licenses terms, because you don't have to use any software whose terms you don't like, whether those terms are cash per seat or give-as-was-given-to-you. I hear more 15 year old boy.
> The question of why the US has the right or power to tell TSMC, a Taiwanese company, who it is allowed to do business
The reason is because the US provides the brunt of security for Taiwan against China. The rule applies if you want continued access to our domestic market.
I'm surprised this isn't higher up in the comments. Historically the island of Taiwan was "China" according to the US. The switch happened thanks to a career criminal, Richard Nixon. US textbooks conveniently omit this entirely.
Taiwan is certainly an independent government welcome to pass its own laws and govern itself. But for military defense, the US has been in charge since the end of the civil war. The same is true of several other Pacific island nations.
The international relations of Taiwan is a non-issue because outside of Haiti I don't think anyone bothers to recognize them.
> The question of why the US has the right or power to tell TSMC, a Taiwanese company, who it is allowed to do business often comes up in these discussions.
US Dollar hegemony. If a company is banned doing business in USD, no large banks will want to touch them.
> The question of why the US has the right or power to tell TSMC, a Taiwanese company, who it is allowed to do business often comes up in these discussions.
The US doesn't have to justify what it asks for, it does that as a convenience for Taiwanese politicians. Why it has the power is a historical question irrelevant to whether it has the power. Why it has the right? Rights are implemented with power.
Proving that the US is wrong according to some moral or rational standard is just an intellectual exercise.
I don't think history is necessary. With Apple alone being around 25% of their income [1], them losing a fraction of the money from the US would almost certainly be worse than losing whomever the US doesn't like at the moment.
Hmm, what if TSMC just told the US, "ok, go screw yourself, I'll sell my services to anyone but you and your companies? Yes, TSMC would lose a lot. But arguably the damage to the US would be a lot more.
But of course ultimately the US has guns and TSMC doesn't, and the US wouldn't accept this type of outcome.
This would be a great way to go out of business. Every single one of their suppliers, and customers, would need to make the same choice simultaneously.
As a simple example, how long would TSMC survive without new machines and support from ASML?
TSMC, the largest Taiwanese corporation, says "screw the US, we'd rather trade with the PRC". What exactly do you think happens to TSMC in that situation?
Are you familiar with what the Taiwanese government is, how it came to be, and the current stance of the PRC towards that government?
This has more to do with ASML supplying the machines that TSMC uses to produce the chips. Without ASML, TSMC would not be leading the world in semiconductor manufacture, they wouldn't even be worth talking about without ASML's machines. And the US gets to say who can have those machines from ASML. China can't have them, due to export limitations. All the US has to do is say no more export to Taiwan and TSMC is fucked.
|In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet and in 1999 joined a consortium, including Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, in order to exploit fundamental research conducted by the US Department of Energy. Because the CRADA it operates under is funded by the US taxpayer, licensing must be approved by Congress.
|In June 2023, the Netherlands' Institute for Human Rights ruled that despite the country's constitution prohibiting discrimination based on nationality, ASML was allowed to reject job applications from residents of countries subject to sanctions under the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria) in order to remain compliant with U.S. law.[46][47][48]
|In January 2024, the Dutch government placed further restrictions on the shipment of some advanced chip-making equipment to China.[49]On 6 September 2024, the Dutch government tightened export controls on certain ASML chipmaking equipment, aligning its policy with U.S. restrictions to limit China’s access to advanced technology amid safety and geopolitical concerns.[50]
These are legal mechanisms that dictate the behaviour of companies and are routinely imposed even when the company has no presence in the country. It is extremely common in the financial sectors e.g. AML/KYC.
Right now the EU for example has sanctions against Russia and Chinese entities.
What I wrote seems to have gone completely over your head.
Other countries impose sanctions, but "secondary" sanctions are very unusual. I don't know of any other country that imposes secondary sanctions on anywhere near the scale that the United States does. It is extremely unusual for countries other than the US to try to impose their own sanctions regimes on foreign companies operating outside their territory, based only on extremely incidental connections (like use of software written in the country imposing sanctions).
UK and EU has imposed secondary sanctions on Russia and China.
And China has used secondary sanctions to prevent support for Taiwan.
Either way majority of US secondary sanctions has been for enforcing AML/KYC which other countries simply leverage instead of imposing their own system.
The UK and EU secondary sanctions are new - literally within the last few months. The US has used secondary sanctions so widely that we may start seeing other countries following suit, as the UK and EU have very recently started to do.
On the other hand, I'm unaware of any Chinese secondary sanctions. Maybe there's some example, but the fact that it's difficult to even find any examples illustrates my point: the US' extensive use of secondary sanctions is far beyond what any other country does.
There is no serial number on the individual die, but TSMC has very unique test lines on the chip that would easily identify if it was in fact made at TSMC.
Is it indicated somewhere in this article, or somewhere else, that the dies are not programmed with a unique serial while still as part of a whole wafer?
I don't have insider knowledge... But I could believe that there is no per-die serial number unless the customer wants one. It would be extra manufacturing steps, and require integration with the customers design.
Due to the way lithography works, it isn't easy to make each die different. The usual way to put serial numbers into chips is with efuses, but not all chips have any efuses at all, and it would require collaboration with the customer to design a way that they be programmed and read (probably on a JTAG chain).
No, but any programming that would occur with identifiable information would occur after the wafer is cut and packaged. Generally this would be after delivery to TSMC's customer.
There isn't any indication here one way or the other, but some the unique IDs of some devices (Microchip unique MAC chips) are documented as being programmed as a wafer, before being diced (as justification for them not being in serial order on a reel, that they may be shuffled from wafer to packaging).
By default I'd assume most chips don't get serialized (their package may have a date/lot code). The article doesn't say what the chip is, so I don't think there's a reason to think that it's one of the types of chip that does usually get a unique ID.
export compliance is a total absolute tire fire, its full of non-sensical policy, and contrary opinions, and the more countries your product goes thru, the worse it gets.
Have a part made in Japan, integrated into a product in the states but sold by someone in the UK to in France? you'll have to comply with Japan, US and UK laws.
Neat fact, the UK considers the Cisco C9200 switch to be a munition, because it has ipsec.
It's not only the UK that considers cryptography to be a munition. It is also classified as munitions in the US:
> Encryption items specifically designed, developed, configured, adapted or modified for military applications (including command, control and intelligence applications) are controlled by the Department of State on the United States Munitions List.
It was part of the whole crypto wars, and the lawsuit brought by Bernstein vs the United States.
See more:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
The Cisco C9200 is not considered a munition in the states.
Have you tried exporting it?
Yes.
Have you succeeded? :)
Yes, we export it to everywhere, without permits.
Restricted by ITAR != munition.
Distribution is where the shenanigans happen.
In New York, the Mob likes to control trucking and rail transport, because it allows them to get their fingers into anyone’s business.
Very easy to have a truck make a 20-minute detour into a hidden depot, where the contents are “inspected.” I know folks that used to work for those types of outfits, and the stories I’ve heard, tell me that the wiseguys are very smart. They know how to get around pretty much any tracking and verification system.
The more people have their hands on the product, the more likely it is to “fall off the truck.”
Then they probably also know when to keep their mitts off something that would definitely attract FBI attention. Or have I been watching too many cop shows ?
Probably, but there’s a lot of money to be made, and it’s likely a risk they may be willing to take.
I was just hearing one of those stories, yesterday, about how someone figured out how to grab bespoke suits.
The prescription drug industry is a good (bad?) example.
Drug production is heavily regulated, as is final distribution (pharmacists), but intermediate distribution (bulk freight), is not. That’s where a lot of prescription medicine falls off trucks.
You might disagree with tech export controls, but they are entirely calculated and purposeful. The friction they cause is intentional.
Export controls in the parent example are intended to cause friction between people in the UK and US? Really?
Yes, anyone exporting anywhere needs to follow compliance rules, because the point is to ensure that all exporters are in compliance.
Consider the OP's example:
> Have a part made in Japan, integrated into a product in the states but sold by someone in the UK to in France? you'll have to comply with Japan, US and UK laws.
The reason all countries tediously ensure their laws are being followed is because, if they weren't, there'd be an obvious legal loophole: you could simply proxy export items to a country with different export restrictions -- and then all export restrictions would be worthless.
Having strict, but identical restrictions would already accomplish that.
Having strict, slightly differing restrictions doesn’t seem to add anything extra of value? It’s pure downsides.
These are different counties. They each decide their own policies on exports.
Regardless, the end result is seemingly causing a huge amount of paperwork and frustration, because there are so many small differences.
Challenge is to find the cheapest switch and router than meets the export law of weapons in the UK....bet it would be a cheap openwrt device.
These chips could have been manufactured by TSMC before the US issued an export ban:
> It is unclear how the chip made its way to Huawei. In 2019, the company released its Ascend 910 chip series. At the time, prior to export controls, the chips were produced by TSMC, two sources told Reuters earlier this year.
The question of why the US has the right or power to tell TSMC, a Taiwanese company, who it is allowed to do business often comes up in these discussions. I've often seen the response that this is US technology, and that any country would apply similar controls to its own technologies. What I don't think people realize is that these sorts of "secondary" controls are very unusual, internationally.
The US imposes controls on goods manufactured abroad using US-made tools or intellectual property. This is a bit like the way that the GPL "infects" other projects, and forces them to abide by its terms, and to my knowledge, the US is the only country that does this (in any case, it's the only country doing this on such a large scale). If you think of how integrated the world economy is, these sorts of "infectious" controls are extremely disruptive.
They say "if you want to do business in the US, with US companies, don't deal with these people/groups/countries."
Exactly this...and since the US is by far the biggest revenue source for semiconductors it would be stupid to ignore this rule. Taiwan in general wants to maintain favor with the US because of the invasion threat of China as well (although I'm not 100% confident the US would get involved in that fight).
> US is by far the biggest revenue source for semiconductors
It's actually China, where sales account for 29% of global semiconductor sales, compared to 26% for the Americas (NA & SA).
https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/SI... (PDF)
I guess this doesn't take into account semiconductors that go to China to be used in devices manufactured there, and then sold to other countries? I'd have thought that wealthy and IT-heavy USA together with other countries in the Americas (1B people) are buying more end products with semiconductors than China. Also, Europe (wealthy 9% of world pop) probably buys more semiconductors (in end products) than 11%.
Remember the population of China is huge. I could totally imagine China out-buying the USA in consumer electronics.
thank you for posting this link, very interesting reading. If you have more of the similar materials, I would be very interested. Thank you !
US sanctions go far beyond that. As I said, US sanctions are designed to be highly "infectious," so that activities that don't seem to have any US connection fall under the US sanctions regime.
The world economy is tightly interconnected, so almost any economic activity anywhere on Earth has at least some incidental, indirect connection to the US (and to China, and to the EU). Imposing such a wide-ranging secondary sanctions regime is extremely disruptive, and it's viewed by other countries as an attack on their sovereignty. When Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, he effectively forced the EU to also renege on the deal, because US sanctions banned virtually every EU company from doing business with Iran. The EU could no longer determine its own trade and foreign policy with Iran.
The answer to this is probably for other countries that want to retain their sovereignty to impose retaliatory sanctions on the US when it targets their companies. The EU is not sufficiently politically unified to do this, though, and most other countries/blocs (except for China) don't have the heft to go one-on-one against the US.
The issue is that the US has used sanctions dishonestly in the past as a way to remove competitors from markets it's planning to let its own companies take over at a later point. Fully trusting the US is foolish. It's a fickle ally.
"for other countries that want to retain their sovereignty to impose retaliatory sanctions on the US when it targets their companies."
I wouldn't hold your breath.
The US imposes controls on trade made in dollars even when said trades as absolutely nothing to do with the US. Why? Because the US thinks they can.
It will be fine until it isn't anymore. China definitely is pushing hard to get the renminbi viewed as a global currency.
Why would it want to ? They're export-driven : becoming a reserve currency is not in their interest. The RMB would appreciate and hurt their competitiveness. Plus, they wouldn't be able to control/drive its value down once it has spread over their border. They paradoxically need to be mostly self-reliant and therefore grow their consumer-base before that happen otherwise they're just putting their fingers in the cogs.
China upstart phase when they viewed themselves as purely export-driven to shore up their economy is over. They now think of themselves as a global power with an internal market deep enough to sustain their own growth and deep tie with countries in Africa and South East Asia with which they would rather do business in their own currency as a way to shore up their depencies towards them.
You are confusing current China with China a decade ago.
Their internal market has deflation and their population is dropping millions per year.
Oh no, at that rate, China will have no more workers left in 1400 years!
But in all seriousness, even though China's population is slowly shrinking, the population of highly educated people is growing.
Education will be helpful as they approach a 2:1 worker:retiree ratio
Taiwan has the same right as any state to tell any other state to go fly a kite, and TSMC has the same right as any vendor to tell any customer to go fly a kite. Perhaps they are not a 15 year old boy and think about ramifications before saying something like that.
GPL doesn't infect anything any more than any other licenses terms, because you don't have to use any software whose terms you don't like, whether those terms are cash per seat or give-as-was-given-to-you. I hear more 15 year old boy.
> The question of why the US has the right or power to tell TSMC, a Taiwanese company, who it is allowed to do business
The reason is because the US provides the brunt of security for Taiwan against China. The rule applies if you want continued access to our domestic market.
I'm surprised this isn't higher up in the comments. Historically the island of Taiwan was "China" according to the US. The switch happened thanks to a career criminal, Richard Nixon. US textbooks conveniently omit this entirely.
Taiwan is certainly an independent government welcome to pass its own laws and govern itself. But for military defense, the US has been in charge since the end of the civil war. The same is true of several other Pacific island nations.
The international relations of Taiwan is a non-issue because outside of Haiti I don't think anyone bothers to recognize them.
> The question of why the US has the right or power to tell TSMC, a Taiwanese company, who it is allowed to do business often comes up in these discussions.
US Dollar hegemony. If a company is banned doing business in USD, no large banks will want to touch them.
> The question of why the US has the right or power to tell TSMC, a Taiwanese company, who it is allowed to do business often comes up in these discussions.
The US doesn't have to justify what it asks for, it does that as a convenience for Taiwanese politicians. Why it has the power is a historical question irrelevant to whether it has the power. Why it has the right? Rights are implemented with power.
Proving that the US is wrong according to some moral or rational standard is just an intellectual exercise.
> Why it has the power is a historical question
I don't think history is necessary. With Apple alone being around 25% of their income [1], them losing a fraction of the money from the US would almost certainly be worse than losing whomever the US doesn't like at the moment.
[1] https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202303030016
Hmm, what if TSMC just told the US, "ok, go screw yourself, I'll sell my services to anyone but you and your companies? Yes, TSMC would lose a lot. But arguably the damage to the US would be a lot more.
But of course ultimately the US has guns and TSMC doesn't, and the US wouldn't accept this type of outcome.
This would be a great way to go out of business. Every single one of their suppliers, and customers, would need to make the same choice simultaneously.
As a simple example, how long would TSMC survive without new machines and support from ASML?
TSMC, the largest Taiwanese corporation, says "screw the US, we'd rather trade with the PRC". What exactly do you think happens to TSMC in that situation?
Are you familiar with what the Taiwanese government is, how it came to be, and the current stance of the PRC towards that government?
There are actually 3 competing political parties in Taiwan with varying stances towards the PRC and the idea of being a US pawn.
This has more to do with ASML supplying the machines that TSMC uses to produce the chips. Without ASML, TSMC would not be leading the world in semiconductor manufacture, they wouldn't even be worth talking about without ASML's machines. And the US gets to say who can have those machines from ASML. China can't have them, due to export limitations. All the US has to do is say no more export to Taiwan and TSMC is fucked.
ASML of course, being a Dutch company and not American, is to say that ASML then has dependencies on somewhere else.
For TSMC though, I think it's much more likely that if they didn't comply, the US navy would land marines in Taiwan to force them to comply
|In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet and in 1999 joined a consortium, including Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, in order to exploit fundamental research conducted by the US Department of Energy. Because the CRADA it operates under is funded by the US taxpayer, licensing must be approved by Congress.
|In June 2023, the Netherlands' Institute for Human Rights ruled that despite the country's constitution prohibiting discrimination based on nationality, ASML was allowed to reject job applications from residents of countries subject to sanctions under the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria) in order to remain compliant with U.S. law.[46][47][48]
|In January 2024, the Dutch government placed further restrictions on the shipment of some advanced chip-making equipment to China.[49]On 6 September 2024, the Dutch government tightened export controls on certain ASML chipmaking equipment, aligning its policy with U.S. restrictions to limit China’s access to advanced technology amid safety and geopolitical concerns.[50]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding
The U.S. is definitely controlling where this tech goes.
If ASML said no to US restrictions, they would quickly find themselves Northstreamed.
US can simply impose sanctions on any company using TSMC.
At which point TSMC would lose most of their customer base overnight.
US is a superpower not just because of guns but because it is a large economy with lots of innovative and globally significant companies.
And then apple would find another supply on Idaho?
Have you never heard of sanctions before ?
These are legal mechanisms that dictate the behaviour of companies and are routinely imposed even when the company has no presence in the country. It is extremely common in the financial sectors e.g. AML/KYC.
Right now the EU for example has sanctions against Russia and Chinese entities.
What I wrote seems to have gone completely over your head.
Other countries impose sanctions, but "secondary" sanctions are very unusual. I don't know of any other country that imposes secondary sanctions on anywhere near the scale that the United States does. It is extremely unusual for countries other than the US to try to impose their own sanctions regimes on foreign companies operating outside their territory, based only on extremely incidental connections (like use of software written in the country imposing sanctions).
UK and EU has imposed secondary sanctions on Russia and China.
And China has used secondary sanctions to prevent support for Taiwan.
Either way majority of US secondary sanctions has been for enforcing AML/KYC which other countries simply leverage instead of imposing their own system.
The UK and EU secondary sanctions are new - literally within the last few months. The US has used secondary sanctions so widely that we may start seeing other countries following suit, as the UK and EU have very recently started to do.
On the other hand, I'm unaware of any Chinese secondary sanctions. Maybe there's some example, but the fact that it's difficult to even find any examples illustrates my point: the US' extensive use of secondary sanctions is far beyond what any other country does.
Only the United States has raised weaponization of network effects to essentially the pinnacle of warfare. Which in essence, geopolitics is.
"Don't deal with my enemies if you want to be my friend" has been a thing since the ancestors of humans were living in caves and carrying clubs.
Dont deal with people who deal with my enemies either.
Don't deal with some of the people who deal with my enemies. Turkey always gets a special exemption, as do the Saudis.
The enemy of your enemy is your friend. Friends can be made, enemies emerge.
And a lot of other Konfuzius'que wisdoms I have to look up again...
I’m sure there is some unscrubbable serial number to at least trace the first, second merchant
There is no serial number on the individual die, but TSMC has very unique test lines on the chip that would easily identify if it was in fact made at TSMC.
Is it indicated somewhere in this article, or somewhere else, that the dies are not programmed with a unique serial while still as part of a whole wafer?
I don't have insider knowledge... But I could believe that there is no per-die serial number unless the customer wants one. It would be extra manufacturing steps, and require integration with the customers design.
Due to the way lithography works, it isn't easy to make each die different. The usual way to put serial numbers into chips is with efuses, but not all chips have any efuses at all, and it would require collaboration with the customer to design a way that they be programmed and read (probably on a JTAG chain).
They could burn the number in after the chip is made.
Either one time fuses and some software, or via directed beam energy fusible or breakable links.
Edit, yeah like the other comment suggested.
No, but any programming that would occur with identifiable information would occur after the wafer is cut and packaged. Generally this would be after delivery to TSMC's customer.
There isn't any indication here one way or the other, but some the unique IDs of some devices (Microchip unique MAC chips) are documented as being programmed as a wafer, before being diced (as justification for them not being in serial order on a reel, that they may be shuffled from wafer to packaging).
By default I'd assume most chips don't get serialized (their package may have a date/lot code). The article doesn't say what the chip is, so I don't think there's a reason to think that it's one of the types of chip that does usually get a unique ID.
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