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Thursday 21 August 2025
Chinese firms enter advanced hybrid bonding race as global chipmakers accelerate
With Moore's Law losing momentum, advanced packaging has become the industry's next significant lever to drive performance gains. At the center of this race is hybrid bonding, widely seen as the next-generation interconnect. The technology is quickly transitioning from the lab to mass production, laying the groundwork for future advances in memory and high-bandwidth memory (HBM)
Thursday 21 August 2025
Executive shake-up at China’s top wafer maker

China's National Silicon Industry Group (NSIG), the country's biggest silicon wafer producer, said longtime executive Wang Qingyu, also known as Jeffrey Wang, has stepped down in a board rotation and will no longer hold any role at the company or its subsidiaries

Thursday 21 August 2025
Samsung could benefit from US approval of lower-spec Nvidia Blackwell chips for China

Industry analysts say Samsung could start supplying 12-layer HBM3E to Nvidia in the fourth quarter of 2025. But shipments for Nvidia's flagship Blackwell processors are projected to make up less than 10% of the total. SK Hynix and Micron have already won certification for 12-layer HBM3E and remain well ahead. Samsung cleared certification for its 8-layer version in the second quarter of 2025, roughly a year after SK Hynix, and is now trying to close the gap

Thursday 21 August 2025
European luxury car brands reeling as China tightens tax policy
As global automakers battle for dominance in an increasingly competitive Chinese market, European luxury brands are facing unprecedented headwinds. Beyond losing market share to fast-rising Chinese manufacturers, a newly implemented luxury tax policy by Beijing is compounding their struggles—threatening what many had viewed as their final stronghold in the world's largest auto market
Thursday 21 August 2025
China and South Korea clash over the future of EV batteries
As the global electric vehicle market begins to cool and Chinese battery giants continue their rapid expansion, South Korea is placing its hopes on next-generation solid-state batteries to regain momentum. Yet with China's formidable research and development resources — and a parallel strategy advancing semi-solid-state technologies — Korean manufacturers are facing mounting pressure in a high-stakes technological race
Wednesday 20 August 2025
PCB giant Zhen Ding plans US$1.1 billion expansion to support AI supply chain
Zhen Ding Technology, the world's largest printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer, announced that its Chinese subsidiary, Avary Holding, has approved a major investment plan for its Huaian campus. The company will invest CNY8 billion (approximately US$1.1 billion) between the second half of 2025 and 2028 to expand high-end PCB production capacity, targeting the fast-growing demand driven by artificial intelligence applications
Wednesday 20 August 2025
Commentary: Who will lead GaN market after TSMC's 2027 exit?
Gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors are on the brink of a major transformation. Once hailed as the rising star among third-generation semiconductors, this technology has fallen from grace due to intense price competition in the Chinese market. Now, with global GaN foundry leader TSMC announcing its withdrawal by mid-2027, the entire industry is entering an early era of fragmentation reminiscent of the Warring States period
Wednesday 20 August 2025
China signals openness to India's rare earth request amid tensions with US
Chinese Foreign Minister Yi Wang's recent visit to India marks a possible easing in China-India relations, with China reportedly agreeing to address India's requests for rare earths, fertilizers, and tunnel boring machines. Official announcements have yet to be made
Wednesday 20 August 2025
Commentary: CXMT targets HBM3 by 2026 as Trump redefines chip trade calculus

Like advanced AI processors, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) has been a target of US export curbs under former President Joe Biden. HBM capacity and bandwidth shape the speed and efficiency of AI training and inference. From Nvidia's H100 to the GB200, HBM capacity has grown 2.4 times and bandwidth 2.6 times. Despite that, China still lacks self-developed HBM and cutting-edge AI chips, which have been left exposed to Washington's pressure points

Wednesday 20 August 2025
Huawei turns to software to ease pain from China's scarce AI memory
The global race to build ever-larger AI models is intensifying, and the battle is no longer confined to Nvidia's powerful GPUs. Another crucial, though less visible, component has emerged as the bottleneck: high-bandwidth memory (HBM)
Wednesday 20 August 2025
US's move to block BOE OLEDs could help South Korea, but raises bigger concerns

The US International Trade Commission (ITC) has issued a preliminary ruling siding with Samsung Display (SDC) in its trade secrets case against Beijing-based BOE Technology. The decision could bar the Chinese company from the US OLED market for nearly 15 years

Wednesday 20 August 2025
Xiaomi strengthens smartphone presence amid modest global growth
Despite declining smartphone sales, Xiaomi maintained its top-three global smartphone ranking amid a mature market while its AIoT business maintained gross margins above 20%. Strategic premiumization, regional growth, and robust R&D investment underpin the company's resilience and long-term competitiveness across smartphones and connected devices
Wednesday 20 August 2025
China's DeepSeek releases V3.1, boosting the AI model's capabilities
DeepSeek announced what appeared to be an update to its older V3 artificial intelligence model on Tuesday, declaring an enhanced version ready for testing.
The V3.1 has a longer context window, according to a DeepSeek post to its official WeChat group, meaning it can consider a larger amount of information for any given query. That could allow it to maintain longer conversations with better recall, for example
Wednesday 20 August 2025
Why TSMC's CoWoS bottleneck could lock AI memory makers into Nvidia's orbit
The AI chip market is expected to stay under Nvidia's dominance in 2026, as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron battle to win sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) orders. Efforts by hyperscalers to lessen dependence on Nvidia have so far fallen short, leaving the US chipmaker at the center of industry competition
Wednesday 20 August 2025
Xiaomi eyes 2027 European expansion following robust EV profitability
Xiaomi's electric vehicle business delivered strong performance in the second quarter of 2025, reflecting the company's strategic focus on premiumization and operational efficiency