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.
King Slide Works posted the fastest revenue growth in August among the 50 Taiwan-listed AI supply chain companies tracked by DIGITIMES, with sales up 318% from a year earlier. It marked the fourth consecutive month that the server rail kit maker more than doubled its revenue, following gains of 161% in May, 200% in June and 315% in July.
The extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography race is splitting into two tracks. Intel has moved High-NA EUV into production, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are targeting DRAM production in 2028, and TSMC plans to introduce the technology into advanced-node high-volume manufacturing in 2030.
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.
A battery quality controversy involving GAC Aion has put supplier CALB, the world's fourth-largest EV battery maker, under scrutiny and highlighted a less comfortable side of China's breakneck expansion in new energy industries.
If Taiwan's government is determined enough, finding funding and land for the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) or the National Institutes of Applied Research (NIAR) is not necessarily the hardest part. The more difficult question comes later: who will shoulder the enormous and recurring cost of keeping advanced semiconductor research infrastructure running?
Taiwan's traditional manufacturers are warning that the island's growth story is widening a long-running labor gap, as semiconductor and AI server demand lifts the economy even as factories struggle to hire and retain skilled workers. In the auto supply chain, where smart vehicle electronics are increasingly essential, companies say the workforce shortage is becoming a structural risk.
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.
Taiwanese companies are only at the start of a broader overseas investment cycle, as Washington signals possible new semiconductor tariffs and Taipei moves to deepen industrial links with Europe, Japan, and ASEAN. Officials say the island's chipmakers are responding to pressure from the US, while also broadening their global strategy to reduce risk and strengthen supply chains.
"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.
China's memory industry is shifting from a single-champion model towards a three-pronged structure. ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is building its position in DRAM, Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) in 3D NAND, while Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing (XMC) is concentrating its next phase on NOR Flash, 3D integration and optoelectronics.
As end-to-end (E2E) autonomous driving architectures gradually become mainstream, the inference demands of physical AI are driving radical transformations in automotive system-on-chip (SoC) design. DIGITIMES Intelligence analyst Jasper Jiang notes that neural processing units (NPUs), or dedicated AI accelerators, are becoming the core processing engines of next-generation automotive SoCs to satisfy three stringent demands of AI inference in autonomous driving: ultra-low latency, reduced system power consumption, and minimized memory bottlenecks.
