Advanced packaging remains one of the semiconductor industry's hottest technology areas in 2026. In Taiwan, terms such as co-packaged optics (CPO), chiplets, and glass substrates are increasingly common as packaging moves deeper into system-level design.
Physical AI is accelerating like never before. Autonomous intelligent machines can walk, run, fly, swim, and assemble car parts in under a minute. New advances in AI models and technologies like dexterous hands are also pushing the boundaries of how smart and useful humanoids can be.
GMI Cloud is making Taiwan a key part of its global AI infrastructure expansion, with a US$500 million investment in an AI factory powered by Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs. Announced in late 2025, the facility is expected to deploy roughly 7,000 GPUs and serve customers including Trend Micro and Wistron.
India's new semiconductor incentive regime is putting more capital at risk for manufacturers, but the first wave of investment commitments suggests lower subsidies have not stopped companies from considering fresh projects.
Advanced packaging is reshaping the semiconductor value chain, making materials innovation a key source of technical breakthroughs. As large-format panel-level packaging (PLP) gains traction, Resonac CTO for semiconductor materials Hidenori Abe told DIGITIMES that the company sees five major materials challenges: warpage, plating, coating, bonding, and polishing.
WG Tech (Jiangxi) Group is accelerating its shift from display glass into semiconductor applications, targeting through-glass via (TGV) substrates for optical communications and advanced packaging as AI demand expands.
Infineon COO Alexander Gorski told DIGITIMES in an exclusive interview at SEMICON Taiwan 2026 that the company's new Dresden fab is ramping at twice the pace of prior expansions, boosted by AI tools and a single virtual fab strategy. He said the facility could reach full capacity in two to three years as demand from the market and from AI takes off.
Infineon COO Alexander Gorski told DIGITIMES in an exclusive interview at Semicon Taiwan 2026 that the current global chip shortage is unlike the one during Covid-19 and will take longer to resolve. He also discussed progress on Infineon's new Dresden plant, in-house manufacturing, outsourcing, and the company's global footprint.
"Demo is not a product," Jingwei Hirain president Chengjian Fan told DIGITIMES in an interview, arguing that China's new-energy vehicle industry has learned hard lessons as fast-moving startups, deep in-house development, and tougher supplier scrutiny reshape the market. He said software demand has increased more than tenfold compared with the internal combustion engine era, while the fastest mass-production delivery cycle in China has been as short as 12 months.
Excitement is growing among investors and the public over the rising capabilities of humanoid robots. Yet as robot makers seek to turn their lab-built innovations into real-world commercial tools, one key bottleneck has emerged: safety.
As global net-zero efforts intensify, governments and major technology companies are investing in emerging nuclear technologies to meet the huge electricity demand from AI data centers and the semiconductor industry. Because nuclear power offers zero-carbon emissions, small modular reactors (SMRs) are drawing growing attention as a potential new power solution in the AI era.
The memory industry is undergoing a structural shift as AI demand surges, and Etron Technology chairman Nicky Lu said the sector's boom will stretch beyond 2027, with shortages likely lasting through 2028 and possibly into 2030. He said supply is tightening further as AI and edge computing create rigid demand, pushing the supply chain to focus on higher-value applications.
Rapid changes in the power and thermal requirements of AI accelerators are forcing data-center designers to incorporate chip-level information earlier in the planning process, according to Cadence Design Systems. This is narrowing a gap that once separated semiconductor development from facility engineering.
Foxconn is repositioning its AI data center business around system integration, modular deployment, and sovereign computing, as the rapid growth of GPU infrastructure changes how customers design and procure computing capacity.
Autonomous driving technology is maturing, and a future in which cars entirely drive themselves is quickly approaching in the rearview mirror. Yet safety and trust remain crucial barriers to overcome before fully autonomous driving becomes a reality, and a key part of this is the "eyes" of the car.
