US Lawmakers Call for Risk Assessment of China’s Photonic Chipmakers

The Department of Commerce building in Washington on April 10, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has urged the Commerce Department to find ways to protect U.S. photonic chip technologies from Chinese threats and competition.

In a letter dated Oct. 27, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said the technology “has the potential to upend the semiconductor industry and redefine battlelines” in China’s technological competition with the United States, “rendering moot” the Biden administration’s export control rules on chips and “creating a critical chokepoint for future semiconductor supply chains.”

The committee asked Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to consider investigating China-based leading photonics entities and imposing export controls on silicon photonics equipment and products.

Silicon photonics rely on light particles, which travel much faster than electrons, to transmit information. The concept has been around for decades, but the development and production of photonic chips have stalled because of the unique set of challenges involved.

With electronic semiconductors nearing their physical limits, the industry has refocused its effort on developing photonic chips in recent years in a bid to unlock more computing power while consuming less energy.

Leading artificial intelligence (AI) chip companies such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices have published research on how to integrate photonics into their chips, while Silicon Valley startup Lightmatter recently raised $400 million for its photonic technology, pushing the company’s value to $4.4 billion.

China has also been aggressively pursuing the technology, with Guangdong Province recently joining a spate of funding programs aimed at building photonic chips in China, according to Chinese state media.

Unlike advanced electronic chips, the production of photonic chips does not require high-precision lithography systems that are needed to etch millions of tiny circuits onto silicon wafers.

It gives Chinese companies one more incentive to develop photonic chips, as advanced lithography systems are effectively banned from being exported to China.

“The design, processing, packaging, and testing of the [photonic] chip were all completed domestically, freeing China from dependence on foreign advanced lithography machines. It is a core technology for China to change lanes and overtake in the chip field,” Bai Bing, whose startup made China’s first photonic chip, was quoted as saying in 2019 by Chinese state media.

The hope that China can “change lanes and overtake” using silicon photonics was parroted by Chen Wenling, an economist at the state-backed think tank the China Center for International Economic Exchange, and Chinese media outlets.

According to Chinese state media, in 2022, Chinese leader Xi Jinping described the industry as a “strategic high-tech” industry in which China is equipped to make the first breakthroughs.

In the past year, Beijing’s Tsinghua University said its researchers have made a light-based chip that’s 3,000 times faster than Nvidia’s A100, the most widely used commercial AI chip, which is subject to U.S. sanctions on China.

The university said the chip also consumes 4 million times less energy than Nvidia’s A100, and it was made with a cheap 20-year-old fabrication process instead of advanced machines that China cannot access.

In April, Tsinghua unveiled an optical AI chiplet called “Taichi,” which it said has “up to 2–3 orders of magnitude improvement in area efficiency and energy efficiency compared to current AI chips.”

The commercialization of the technology has also been underway. A government-backed pilot production line, launched by the Chip Hub for Integrated Photonics Xphore, began operating on Sept. 25.

Another Chinese company, SinTone, is also building a photonic chips production line in Tianjin that is expected to begin production in 2025, SinTone’s CEO, Sui Jun, told Chinese state media.

According to an analysis published in January by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, it’s unlikely that photonic chips will replace electronic chips any time soon, but recent developments suggest that “could present China at least a partial path to the leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing that does not require the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment.”

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), ranking member of the committee, said in their letter that the Commerce Department should “consider investigating leading Chinese photonics companies,” adding that companies designing equipment for China’s photonic chip production are “potentially operating directly contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, and U.S. technology should not further support these efforts.”

They also recommended explicitly including photonics technology and photonic chips on the department’s list of controlled technologies because the dual-use nature of photonics technology “makes it particularly susceptible to military end-use diversion by problematic actors.”

Raimondo was asked to address the committee by Dec. 1, answering questions such as her assessment of national security risks posed by China’s silicon photonics industry, the industry’s situation in the United States, and the resources needed to carry out the task.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Commerce Department for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Reuters contributed to this report.