Why did Taiwan ban chip exports to Russia & Belarus?

Taiwan restricts sales of CPUs to less than 25 MHz to Russia, and Belarus for the Ukraine incursion.

This week, their Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) published a list of imperative high-tech goods that are banned from export to Russia and Belarus, as reported by DigiTimes. The ministry said exports of these high-tech essentials are also barred from Belarus because it could help Russia neglect the command.

Taiwan bans exports of modern chips to Russia

Firms from these two countries are now barred from purchasing Taiwan-made microprocessors or microcircuits which have any of the following specifications: performance speeds of 5 gigaflops or more, clock frequency rates in extreme of 25 MHz, an external interconnection with a data transfer rate of 2.5 MB/s or greater, more than 144 pins, or a basic broadcasting delay time of fewer than 0.4 nanoseconds.

The restrictions which the island also applied to Russia last month – bar Taiwanese companies from exporting a long list of tech products there without special permission. The move is largely symbolic given there Lowest levels of direct trade with Belarus or Russia.

But Ukraine’s condition has won huge public sympathy in Taiwan due to what many people view as the parallels between what is happening in the European country and what could happen if China ever uses force to bring the island it claims as its own under Chinese control.

The export control list includes weapons for making semiconductors, an industry where Taiwan is a world leader, as well as lasers and exploration systems. It is meant to avert technology from being used for military functions.

These conditions essentially exclude Russia and Belarus from modern technology made in Taiwan. Tom’s Hardware pointed out that when Sony’s PlayStation 2 was released in 2000, its absolute performance was about 6.2 FP32 gigaflops, while the PlayStation 5, which was released 20 years later has 10.3 teraFlops.

In addition, Taiwan will no longer sell chip production weapons to these countries. This includes structure and liability weapons for wafer production, scanners, and scanning electron microscopes.