Russia-Ukraine Crisis: Intel and AMD Will Reportedly Stop Selling Chips to Russia, TSMC to Follow Suit

The hostilities between Ukraine and Russia continue and a number of nations have voiced their opinions condemning this war. Many countries and organisations have stopped trading with Russia, cancelled all the global events that were scheduled to take place in Russia, and so much more. The most recent reports now involve Intel and AMD where they have supposedly decided to stop selling chips to Russia.

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, Intel and AMD have decided to ban chip sales to the Russian nation, in addition to that Intel has also intimated Chinese IT establishments to halt their chip sales to Russia. This decision comes in tandem with TSMC also backing out from selling chipsets to Russian developers and manufacturers.

It is difficult to gauge the impact of this decision. According to reports, Intel and AMD will not be selling any chips that can be used for Military Action in Russia, semi-conductor sales have been completely banned at the moment. Intel Core Chips and AMD Ryzen chips will be sold as usual as these chipsets are catered more towards the civilian population than the military forces.

In a statement provided to Tom’s Hardware, Intel states that, “Intel complies with all applicable export regulations and sanctions in the countries in which it operates, including the new sanctions issued by OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control] and the regulations issued by BIS [Bureau of Industry and Security].”

The action to ban the chip sales to Russia will be executed immediately. This move by Intel and AMD shouldn’t affect their sales heavily as most of their sales come from the general Russian people compared to the Russian Government. The banning of chip sales has an intended purpose of shorting the supply of super computers, communications and other military usage in order to hamper with the Russian military action occurring in Ukraine at the moment.

Although the ban of the chip sales has already been executed, Russia already has some back up plans where they would use in-house companies such as Baikal, MCST, Yadro, and STC Module to cope up with the chip shortage in the country. However this plan will not be easy to execute as all these companies get their inventory manufactured by TSMC, which has already decided to go along with Intel and AMD in their decision of banning chip sales to the country.