DIGITIMES: News and Insight of the Global Supply Chain

Taiwan can power its AI chip boom — but not with green energy

Scarlett Yu — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:37:05 GMT

DIGITIMES Intelligence observes that discussions at the semiconductor sustainability and energy forum during SEMICON Taiwan 2026 centered on two questions: whether Taiwan will have enough electricity to support continued semiconductor expansion driven by AI, and whether that electricity will come from renewable sources.

South Korean NPU startups face validation hurdle in push for global sales

Sherri Wang — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:36:43 GMT

South Korea's neural processing unit (NPU) startups are moving from chip development toward commercial deployment, but limited experience operating at scale remains a major hurdle to winning global customers.

Apple's foldable phone faces durability test as suppliers eye crease risks

Jingyue Hsiao — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:36:17 GMT

Apple's first foldable phone is drawing worldwide attention because its design choices could shape how future bendable devices are built and priced. But suppliers say one of the industry's oldest durability issues remains unresolved: whether the protective film over the inner display can lift over time, especially at the center crease.

Star Shining launches IPO plan as renewable energy assets reach 676MW

DIGITIMES — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:31:02 GMT

Star Shining, an AUO Group affiliate, signed an IPO advisory agreement with Cathay Securities on September 15, formally starting its capital markets process in Taiwan. The renewable energy developer said it is targeting a listing in 2028 after building and managing 676MW of renewable energy capacity.

ITRI showcases AI robots, drones to push commercialization in southern Taiwan

DIGITIMES — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:30:53 GMT

The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) held its ITRI Innovation Day on September 15 in Tainan, Taiwan, bringing together research groups and startup teams to highlight 25 cross-disciplinary technologies in AI, smart robotics, and unmanned vehicles. The event was designed to move more research and development results into industrial use through demonstrations, business matchmaking, and an innovation market.

China's humanoid robot race, Part 2: Upstream profits gather around dexterous hands

DIGITIMES — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:30:36 GMT

Humanoid robot makers are cutting prices and scaling production, yet much of the industry remains unprofitable. Upstream suppliers are starting to show a different economics — especially in dexterous robotic hands.

AI server tracker: BMC, cable, case suppliers post August 2026 gains

DIGITIMES — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:30:12 GMT

Taiwan's AI server supply chain continued to show strong year-over-year growth in August, although performance varied significantly across baseboard management controller (BMC), cable/connector, and server-case suppliers.

DeepSeek to hire its first CFO as it aims for public listing, expands workforce

DIGITIMES — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:29:40 GMT

DeepSeek is reportedly set to hire Wentao Yan, a partner at venture capital firm GL Ventures, as its first CFO. If the appointment takes place, it would happen at an important time for the Chinese AI startup as it seeks to go public, begins a large expansion of its workforce, and invests in chipmaking and computing capacity.

Apple exits Musk's AI lawsuit, but the fight over iPhone AI access is only getting bigger

DIGITIMES — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:29:21 GMT

The recent AI antitrust case between two of the high-tech landscape's most powerful camps appears to have quietly ended following Elon Musk's legal retreat from Apple. But the battle over AI distribution control is far from settled, as pointed accusations from SpaceXAI and X regarding Apple's behind-the-scenes role in constraining generative-AI competition have left the broader industry unsettled over questions of AI access and app visibility amid Apple's increasingly open, multi-model ecosystem.

As AI data centers hit a transmission wall, GlobalFoundries pushes into silicon photonics

DIGITIMES — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:28:56 GMT

At the China International Optoelectronics Expo (CIOE), a palm-sized metal transceiver represents the shift from copper to light in data center infrastructure, one of the biggest transformations in the industry amid the AI boom.

NVHBM is not a memory revolution; Nvidia seeks to platformize cHBM, dominate custom AI architectures

Charlene Chen — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:28:17 GMT

DIGITIMES observed that Nvidia's newly announced NVHBM is not a brand-new memory technology, but rather an extension of existing custom HBM (cHBM). It is a managed cHBM design that moves the memory controller, which originally sat on the XPU, into the HBM logic base die, and pairs it with custom physical-layer (PHY) and die-to-die (D2D) interfaces. In strategic terms, Nvidia is extending its moat from GPUs to the memory architecture of custom ASICs, and is trying to define how future custom AI chips connect to memory, hook into scale-up networks, and come together as complete AI racks.

DIGITIMES Insight: Taiwan's small IC design firms face a weaker second half after rebound

Jingyue Hsiao — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:25:01 GMT

Taiwan's smaller IC design firms posted a strong revenue recovery in the first half of 2026, but the gains may prove difficult to extend. DIGITIMES said higher prices and early customer buying lifted sales, even as consumer demand remained soft. The second half now looks exposed to weaker momentum.

AR glasses target 2 billion myopia users as China supply chain eyes doubling shipments

Lily Hess — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 20:31:00 GMT

Suppliers in China's AR glasses supply chain see the approximately 2 billion people worldwide with myopia as a potential market and said shipments are set to double year after year, even as the industry continues to sift winners from losers. At this year's China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE), smart glasses remained a standout theme alongside optical communications.

Chip revenue heads to US$2.4 trillion on price, not volume, Yole says

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:34:00 GMT

The semiconductor industry is on track to nearly quadruple in revenue by 2031 while shipping barely more silicon than it does today, a divergence that makes pricing power, not capacity, the defining variable of the AI buildout.

AI data centers give idle EV battery capacity a second life

Levi Li — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:32:00 GMT

Slowing EV growth in North America, tariffs, and policy restrictions are pushing automakers and battery suppliers to repurpose idle capacity. At the same time, surging power demand and grid volatility from generative AI data centers are lifting demand for battery energy storage systems (BESS), making energy storage a key diversification market alongside defense, drones, and humanoid robots.

Research Insight: Google scales TPU systems to 1 million chips as power becomes the bottleneck

Sherri Wang — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:55:00 GMT

At SEMICON Taiwan 2026, Google outlined the direction of its AI infrastructure, and DIGITIMES notes that the discussion extended well beyond its next-generation TPU. Rather than focusing on a single chip, Google described how it links large numbers of TPUs into an integrated computing system spanning compute clusters, data centers, and ultimately multiple data centers, while also addressing the power constraints that emerge as the system continues to scale.

Amodei's AI slowdown call is unlikely to dent chip demand, industry sources say

Jingyue Hsiao — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:50:00 GMT

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call to slow frontier AI development has stirred debate over safety, but chip industry sources say global demand for AI infrastructure is likely to keep rising. For readers worldwide, the larger issue is not whether AI spending stops, but how quickly it spreads across clouds, devices, and industries.

iPhone Duo's identity shapes Apple's foldable strategy

Jingyue Hsiao — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:30:00 GMT

Apple's first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo, is drawing close attention as analysts forecast shipments of 5 million to 6 million units by year-end. The device could make Apple the world's second-largest foldable phone supplier, behind Samsung Electronics, and shape how global consumers and rivals view future foldable screens.

DIGITIMES Insight: Intel may lack a price edge over TSMC on SK Hynix HBM base dies

Sherri Wang — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:15:00 GMT

SK Hynix is reportedly considering Intel as an additional manufacturing source for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) base dies beginning with the HBM4E generation, a move that could reduce its reliance on TSMC and give the memory maker greater supply and cost flexibility.

Charts: Memory has held six of the ten fastest-growing spots in Taiwan's chip sector for seven straight months

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:15:00 GMT

Of the 94 listed Taiwanese semiconductor companies DIGITIMES tracks, 80 grew year-over-year in August 2026 and 14 declined. Median year-over-year growth was 27%. Sixty-three of the 94 posted faster year-over-year growth in August than in July, when the median was 21%.

Astera Labs targets the KV cache bottleneck as agentic AI outgrows GPU memory

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:30:34 GMT

Astera Labs has added three products to its Leo memory controller line, aimed at a problem that arises as AI inference shifts from single queries to agents that run continuous loops: the key-value cache outgrows the HBM on the accelerator, and the usual fallback makes things worse.

Airbus weighs supplier stakes to relieve aerospace parts bottlenecks

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:57:00 GMT

Airbus is monitoring parts lead times across its supply chain and said direct equity stakes in, or takeovers of, subcontractors could be used in extreme cases to prevent supply disruptions. The comments came as the global aerospace industry continues to face bottlenecks in engines, cabin interiors and other critical components.

The Boring lands US$3 billion from UAE investors, fueling Musk's underground transit dream

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:01:06 GMT

Even as he leads SpaceX through the largest IPO in history and rolls out Tesla's Cybercab robotaxi fleet in Austin, Texas, Elon Musk has not let go of his ambitions for underground tunnel transportation, continuing to push forward the tunnel-drilling business of his company The Boring.

Tesla's rare-earth-free Cybercab challenges China's grip on EV magnets

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:28:54 GMT

With Tesla's EV ambitions growing amid a years-long push toward full electrification, the deployment of the Cybercab has emerged as a major experiment testing the boundaries of autonomous driving.

How AI real-world deployment is rewriting IPC business models

Yunnie Cheng — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:22:26 GMT

Mega-construction projects currently underway across the US, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are heavily concentrated in two main sectors: semiconductor fabs and automated warehousing/logistics hubs. This trend underscores how AI applications have moved beyond theoretical concepts into physical deployment.

Apple's foldable debut set to further widen Samsung Display's OLED lead

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:21:36 GMT

Samsung Display could emerge as one of the biggest supply-chain beneficiaries of Apple's entry into foldable smartphones, as the Korean panel maker already accounts for about two-thirds of global foldable smartphone panel shipments, with Apple set to become a major new source of demand.

High-capacity memory shortages worsen: Team Group reveals edge AI strategy amid rising price pressures

Yunnie Cheng — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:20:43 GMT

As memory shortages worsen, Team Group is aggressively deepening its footprint in the industrial control market. Vice general manager Shao-An Hsia noted that with AI applications accelerating their expansion from the cloud to the edge, industrial and edge system manufacturers must pivot away from competing head-on with cloud giants for component supply. Instead, they need to rely on flexible specification adjustments and specialized hardware protection technologies. In driving edge AI adoption, memory suppliers will serve as "icebreakers" during the commercialization process.

Murata considers bigger MLCC expansion as AI server demand extends beyond 2028

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:15:51 GMT

Murata Manufacturing is considering a new, potentially larger expansion of multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) capacity beyond its existing investment plans, as demand from AI servers is expected to remain strong through the end of the decade.

AI servers are eating MLCC capacity, and Chinese suppliers are taking what's left

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 08:59:13 GMT

AI servers are reshaping the global multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) market. Murata Manufacturing and Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEMCO) are steering limited capacity toward high-value server components, tightening conventional supply, lifting prices, and creating an opening for Chinese suppliers in PCs.

China's Guoxin Micro buys its way into power-chip manufacturing

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 08:58:52 GMT

Unigroup Guoxin Microelectronics plans to acquire WeEn Semiconductors for CNY1.9 billion (≈ US$283 million), giving the Chinese specialty IC supplier in-house wafer manufacturing and a faster route into power semiconductors.

MediaTek unveils first 2nm chip to run 30 billion AI models on phones arriving this quarter

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 08:34:19 GMT

MediaTek has become the first merchant silicon vendor to announce a 2-nanometer smartphone processor, unveiling the Dimensity 9600 Pro on Tuesday as the industry races to run heavy artificial intelligence models entirely within the thermal and memory envelopes of a handheld device.

Interview: Corning sees CPO, glass core as new semiconductor battlegrounds

Yunnie Cheng — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 08:27:50 GMT

As artificial intelligence applications accelerate, surging global semiconductor demand is pushing advanced packaging, co-packaged optics (CPO), glass core substrates (GCS), and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) to the forefront of industry attention. Corning is expanding its footprint across the semiconductor supply chain by leveraging its core strengths in advanced glass formulations and optical fiber technologies, collaborating closely with value-chain partners to navigate next-generation technological shifts.

Wiwynn deepens US AI server footprint with US$1.6 billion Texas manufacturing hub

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 08:17:00 GMT

Wiwynn has officially opened its advanced manufacturing facility in Socorro, Texas, deepening the Taiwan-based server maker's US footprint. The move comes as booming AI infrastructure demand drives cloud service providers and their suppliers toward more localized North American production.

South Korea updates AI safeguards as Microsoft sets shutdown rules

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 08:09:46 GMT

South Korea is updating its artificial intelligence security guidance as companies deploy AI agents capable of operating with limited human supervision, while Microsoft is proposing model-level rules requiring its systems to remain subject to human interruption and shutdown.

BYD's 2027 triple play could rewrite the EV race

DIGITIMES — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 08:03:24 GMT

BYD is lining up solid-state batteries, faster charging, and higher-level automated driving around 2027, potentially removing several of the remaining barriers separating electric vehicles from gasoline cars.