US Institutes GAA-FET Technology EDA Software Ban on China, Stalling sub-3nm Nodes

The US Government has instituted a ban on supply of GAA-FET EDA software to China. Humans can no longer design every single circuit on chips with tens of billions of transistors, and so EDA software is used to micromanage design based broadly on what chip architects want. Synopsys, Cadence, and Siemens are major EDA software suppliers. Intel is rumored to use an in-house EDA software that it doesn't sell, although this could change with the company roping in third-party foundries, such as TSMC, for cutting-edge logic chips. GAA or "Gates-all-around" technology is vital to building transistors in the 3 nm and 2 nm silicon fabrication nodes. Samsung is already using GAA for its 3 nm node, while TSMC intends to use it with its 2N node. Intel is expected to use it with its Intel 20A node.