AMD & Nvidia Manufacturer TSMC Tech Secret Stolen & Sold To China: Former Engineer Arrested

A lot of shady dealings have been going on in the eastern part of the world. According to the latest report, a former TSMC engineer has been accused of stealing the tech secrets of AMD and Nvidia them across the Taiwan Straits to a Chinese rival, HLMC.

One employee from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces the chips for the great and the good of the PC hardware market, specifically Nvidia and AMD, is accused to stole the tech secrets. It is one of the biggest processor manufacturers around the world, along with Samsung and Intel, as reported by PCGamesN.

TSMC's 28nm process is used to manufacture the different GPUs for both the big graphics card companies in the past. TSMC is the only supplier of all of NVIDIA's 28nm graphics chips, including Kepler and Maxwell based GTX 600, 700 and 900 graphics products. The TSMC was also the supplier of AMD's 28nm gaming console and HD 7000, R 200 and R 300 graphics chips.

TSMC continues to supply NVIDIA with 16nm for its Pascal GTX 1000 series products. However, AMD chose to take its FinFET business to its long-time strategic partner GlobalFoundries who is right now supplying the company with 14nm wafers for its RX 400 series and 500 series Polaris graphics processors as well as latest AMD Ryzen CPUs.

The DigiTimes report claims the former engineer, named Hsu, has been accused of taking details and secret materials relating to TSMC's 28nm manufacturing process and handing them over to Shanghai Huali Microelectronics (HLMC). The engineer was arrested before he even had a chance to start his new job and reveal details in mainland China.

The publication also notes that some Chinese manufacturers are headhunting Taiwanese talent to get their own fans off the ground. The Micron is taking legal action against some of their Taiwan partners for allegedly burglary their tech and handing it over to China-based RAM companies.