Smugglers pair Samsung and SK Hynix HBM with throwaway server chips to dodge US export controls, The Information reports

Smugglers are getting high-bandwidth memory from Samsung and SK Hynix into China by bonding it onto cheap, deliberately weak server processors, The Information reports. Because US rules judge a package by its processor's computing power, the bundles fall below export thresholds; they move through Hong Kong, then workshops in China heat them to melt the solder, pull off the HBM stacks and discard the chips. A broker said a single HBM3E stack now sells for about $4,000, up from a few hundred dollars a year ago. Much of the memory reportedly flows to Huawei customers, as Huawei tells some buyers of its upcoming Ascend 960DT to source their own memory. SK Hynix said it complies with export rules and has not supplied Huawei since 2020.