Below are the top DIGITIMES Asia stories from October 20 to 26, 2025.
Exclusive: TSMC tightens China orders after US sanctions; Huawei proxy Sophgo cut off, Bitmain halved
Driven by strong demand from Apple and Nvidia, TSMC posted record third-quarter earnings and lifted its full-year revenue growth forecast to about 35 percent, or roughly US$122 billion. Yet the boom masks a sharp slowdown in business from China. Supply-chain sources said orders from Chinese clients have collapsed, with Sophgo — accused by US officials of helping Huawei skirt sanctions — seeing its wafer orders drop to zero this year.
Bitmain Technologies, a major cryptocurrency chipmaker, now accounts for barely 2% of TSMC's revenue. The shift highlights how US export controls and the global AI surge are reshaping TSMC's customer base.
Micron warns DRAM market tightness to worsen through 2026
Sumit Sadana, Micron Technology's executive vice president and chief business officer, expects the DRAM market to remain under severe strain, with supply-demand gaps widening well into 2026.
CXMT, Huawei align on HBM3 ahead of China's 2026 AI memory leap
High-bandwidth memory, or HBM, has emerged as the latest battleground among global DRAM makers. As Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron prepare for HBM4 mass production in 2026, China's CXMT has reportedly delivered 16-nanometer HBM3 samples to Huawei and its partners — a move seen as a precursor to large-scale manufacturing planned for the same year.
Broadcom and Marvell land major AI accelerator orders, TSMC remains key manufacturer
Nvidia currently controls more than 90 percent of the global GPU market. But as Google and Amazon Web Services ramp up investment in their own AI accelerators and broaden their deployment, analysts expect Nvidia's market share to come under pressure after 2026, possibly falling to around 70 percent. Still, regardless of who designs the chips or how US firms compete, the manufacturing will likely remain in TSMC's hands.
China races to cut ASML reliance: AMIES unveils lithography lineup
China is intensifying efforts to build a self-sufficient chipmaking ecosystem. The latest example came from AMIES Technology, part of Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE), which introduced a suite of lithography and wafer processing systems — including laser annealing and inspection tools — designed to lessen the country's reliance on ASML, the Dutch leader in advanced lithography.
China's YMTC aims for fully local chip production, but can it deliver?
China's memory chipmaker YMTC has announced plans for its Phase III fabrication plant, with a registered capital of CNY 20.72 billion (about US$2.91 billion). According to market sources, the project aims to fully utilize domestically produced semiconductor equipment, a 100 percent localization milestone that would be unprecedented in China's chip industry.
OpenAI, AMD, Broadcom unite behind Ethernet to reshape AI infrastructure
A new consortium of AI leaders is tackling a critical infrastructure challenge. The ESUN Alliance, unveiled at the 2025 Open Compute Project Global Summit, unites OpenAI, Meta, AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Broadcom to establish an open Ethernet interconnect standard. The collaboration seeks to reduce fragmentation in AI chip connectivity and could set a new benchmark for global AI hardware interoperability, marking a notable alignment among industry rivals.
Article edited by Jack Wu
