DIGITIMES: News and Insight of the Global Supply Chain

Samsung reportedly shifts sub-10nm DRAM roadmap toward hybrid bonding

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:55:00 GMT

Samsung Electronics has reportedly revised the roadmap for its first sub-10nm DRAM generation, making a wafer-to-wafer hybrid-bonding architecture the baseline for its D0a process while moving its vertical-channel-transistor (VCT) design to a separate D0a-V derivative.

Xi-Trump summit masks AI rift as Chinese AI leaders stay away

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:25:01 GMT

Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to make his first state visit to the US since 2015, with the Trump administration rolling out high-level welcoming ceremonies, a state dinner and other diplomatic pomp. But industry observers and think tanks say the real goal is not to settle structural disputes over trade, AI, rare earths and Taiwan in one shot, but to keep US-China competition from spiraling further out of control.

Huawei founder Zhengfei Ren reappears in Shenzhen — Dongfeng smart vehicle alliance moves into focus

Levi Li — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:24:25 GMT

Huawei founder Zhengfei Ren made a public appearance in Shenzhen on September 22 for talks with Dongfeng Motor general manager Changjun Feng that also included other Huawei executives. The two sides discussed deeper strategic cooperation in smart vehicles, alongside coordinated product development and technology innovation.

Qualcomm pushes Snapdragon PCs further into Linux, GoogleBook as AI shifts to the device edge

Jingyue Hsiao — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:13:11 GMT

Qualcomm used the second day of its Snapdragon Summit 2026 to underline a broader shift for Snapdragon-powered PCs, announcing Linux support for the Snapdragon X2 Series while highlighting Googlebook laptops powered by the Snapdragon X Elite. The moves signal growing momentum for Qualcomm's PC business across operating systems and new AI-focused form factors.

LG Display scraps Nanjing automotive LCD module sale to Top Run

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:11:09 GMT

LG Display has scrapped the planned sale of its automotive LCD module business in Nanjing, China, to Top Run Total Solution after the companies failed to reach a final agreement on transaction terms, derailing a plan to shift the operation from in-house production to outsourcing.

TSMC locks in 3-6% wafer out price hikes for 2027

Charlene Chen — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:09:04 GMT

TSMC is reportedly planning another wafer foundry price increase, with supply chain sources saying its order visibility now extends to 2030. According to the sources, the company plans to adjust wafer prices from January 2027 across different processes, with hikes of about 3-6% as tight capacity and strong AI demand keep customers in line.

Skoda's top earner CEO jumps to Volvo, rattling Volkswagen Group

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:03:14 GMT

Skoda CEO Klaus Zellmer, long seen as one of Volkswagen Group's top-performing brand executives, will leave the company and become president and CEO of Swedish luxury carmaker Volvo Cars no later than October 1, 2027. The surprise move has jolted the global auto industry and adds pressure to Volkswagen Group as it navigates painful transformation and profit warnings.

Eternal Materials eyes 2H26 peak season as precision equipment, advanced packaging shipments rise

Eifeh Strom — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:02:44 GMT

Eternal Materials reported unaudited earnings before taxes (EBT) of NT$269 million (approx. US$8.47 million) in August 2026, up 28.05% from August 2025, with pre-tax earnings per share (EPS) of NT$0.23. Cumulative EBT for January through August totaled NT$2.3 billion, up 37.31% from a year earlier, with pre-tax EPS of NT$1.96.

Qualcomm bets on earphones as the voice gateway for personal AI

Jingyue Hsiao — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:01:05 GMT

Qualcomm used its keynote on the second day of Snapdragon Summit 2026 to argue that earphones, glasses, and other wearables will shape the next phase of AI computing. For global consumers and device makers, the shift could redefine how people access assistants, services, and cloud-connected tools on the move.

Anthropic joins OpenAI, Google DeepMind in Singapore

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:55:13 GMT

Anthropic will open its Singapore office in October, making it the company's fifth office in the Asia-Pacific region after Tokyo, Bengaluru, Seoul, and Sydney. The move underscores the AI company's push into Singapore as demand for Claude surges across startups, large enterprises, and government agencies.

Taiwan's Yusin pivots China OE brake pad business from BYD to JV automakers

Willis Ke — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:55:00 GMT

Taiwan-listed Yusin Holding Corp. said on September 23 that its Chinese subsidiary Fuzhou Assured Brake Systems is reducing its reliance on BYD and shifting its China original-equipment (OE) brake pad business toward joint-venture automakers including Volkswagen, Nissan and Honda. The subsidiary is targeting an 11% share of China's OE brake pad market by 2027.

Anthropic brings in Accenture to audit AI safety

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:50:03 GMT

Anthropic has announced a third-party on-site evaluation program, bringing in staff from Faculty, the AI company owned by Accenture, to test model safety measures with near-employee access. The two sides have each committed at least US$1 billion over the next five years to build what Anthropic calls a third-party embedded evaluation mechanism.

Qualcomm adopts 'offset PoP' packaging to cool new flagship phone SoC

Lily Hess — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:42:03 GMT

Qualcomm unveiled two flagship mobile platforms at the Snapdragon Summit 2026, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, which changes its packaging approach to improve heat dissipation. During a media Q&A, Qualcomm Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobile Handsets Chris Patrick said the new package still falls under existing Package on Package (PoP) technology, but the memory is no longer stacked directly above the die and is shifted to the side to create a thermal path.

Xi's US visit stirs alarm over a possible Chinese auto push into America

Jingyue Hsiao — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:34:24 GMT

Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the US is heightening anxiety across the global auto industry, where suppliers, dealers, and lawmakers fear it could open the door to Chinese carmakers in America. For readers worldwide, the issue matters because it could reshape EV pricing, supply chains, jobs, and trade tensions far beyond the US market.

Garmin drops Micro LED after 1 year, returns to OLED

Yunnie Cheng — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:25:31 GMT

The commercial adoption of Micro LED display technology is facing another major setback. Just one year after making waves with the world's first commercial Micro LED smartwatch, Garmin has dropped the technology from its latest lineup. The newly announced Fenix 9 series, unveiled in August 2026, uses AMOLED and memory-in-pixel (MiP) solar display options instead, highlighting the persistent technical and economic hurdles facing Micro LED deployment.

India reportedly probes LG, Samsung over duties on OLED TV display parts

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:24:05 GMT

India's Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is investigating LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics over whether they underpaid import duties on display parts for OLED televisions, Reuters reported on September 23, citing five unnamed sources. The probe puts a tariff classification question at the center of a premium TV segment both South Korean companies are counting on to grow in India.

Alibaba Zhenwu V900 joins Huawei Ascend 960 in race to fill Nvidia's China AI compute gap

Levi Li — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:18:29 GMT

Alibaba has formally unveiled its self-developed Zhenwu V900 AI chip at the 2026 Apsara Conference, with CEO Eddie Wu describing the T-Head Semiconductor-designed processor as "China's most powerful AI chip to date." The V900 is intended to fill part of the computing gap left by restrictions on access to Nvidia's high-end accelerators.

Supermicro begins shipping Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 AI racks

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:11:40 GMT

Supermicro has begun shipping Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin NVL72 systems, moving the rack-scale platform from product demonstrations into customer deployments as AI infrastructure increasingly requires integrated computing, power, and liquid-cooling systems.

Qualcomm's PickNik deal brings robotics software to its edge AI push

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:02:44 GMT

MoveIt's integration with Qualcomm's Dragonwing and Arduino platforms could give robot builders a more direct route from on-device AI to motion planning and control, while also testing whether the open-source project can retain its cross-platform standing under new ownership.

Intel puts CPU-GPU coordination at center of agentic AI strategy

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 01:37:47 GMT

Intel is positioning closer coordination between CPUs, GPUs and other computing resources as a key requirement for the next phase of AI, as agentic AI shifts workloads from model inference toward complex task execution.

Trump-Xi pre-summit watch: H20 setbacks and Ascend gains reshape China's Nvidia calculus

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:20:38 GMT

Ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, the key semiconductor question is no longer simply how much Nvidia hardware Washington will allow China to buy.

Industrial software giants race to build industry world models

Yunnie Cheng — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:19:11 GMT

While generative AI has surged into mainstream consumer use thanks to ChatGPT, the adoption of AI across industrial sectors has progressed at a much slower pace. Industry analysts point out that the primary culprit is the tendency of current AI architectures to "hallucinate," a fatal vulnerability in manufacturing environments where there is no tolerance for error. As industrial AI development cannot rely on large language models (LLMs) alone, attention is rapidly shifting toward industry world models that anchor AI systems in the laws of physics. Recognizing this pivot, global industrial software giants are already aggressively positioning themselves in this space.

Powertech targets quarterly growth in 2026, eyes record high

Lily Hess — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:18:00 GMT

Powertech Technology expects stronger memory packaging and testing demand, higher average selling prices (ASPs), and ramping high-end through-silicon via (TSV) DDR5 production in the fourth quarter of 2026 to drive sequential growth throughout 2026 and lift revenue to a new record. Its Taiwan fan-out panel-level package (FOPLP) line, already booked by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), is set to add revenue from 2027 and open another growth chapter for both sales and profit.

AUO unveils EPS 2030 blueprint linking sustainability to business value

Charlene Chen — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:17:09 GMT

AUO has set out its EPS 2030 sustainability goals, expanding beyond factory energy saving and carbon reduction to applications including smart mobility, smart healthcare, smart retail, smart manufacturing, and low-carbon digital transformation. The company outlined 31 sustainability targets in total and said it has already achieved all 10 of its 2025 EPS goals, with a 100% completion rate.

GMI AI compute leasing business sells out in US as big users lock in long contracts

Rodney Chan — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:16:35 GMT

GMI Technology, a Taiwan-based electronics component distributor and application solutions provider, said its AI computing rental business is booming, with strong demand from US technology companies for computing power. The company said large users tend to secure computing capacity through long-term contracts, leaving the market short of supply.

SK Hynix Indiana HBM plant faces lawsuit

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:16:08 GMT

SK Hynix's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production site under construction in Indiana has been drawn into local litigation as the race for AI memory capacity intensifies. Local residents in the US are seeking to overturn a land-use change and halt construction, with a trial scheduled for December 2026 and the case drawing market attention.

Trump-Xi pre-summit watch: China charts a sovereignty-first path for frontier AI

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:15:33 GMT

When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping discuss artificial intelligence, the deeper divide may not be over whether AI needs rules, but over what those rules are designed to protect.

OUCC sees semiconductor chemical shipments ramping up in 2027

Sherri Wang — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:15:11 GMT

Oriental Union Chemical Corporation (OUCC) expects shipments of semiconductor chemicals to ramp up in 2027 as more products complete customer qualification, with the Taiwan-based chemical maker targeting electronic chemicals to account for 10% of revenue by 2028.

Microsoft reframes AI ROI calculations, keeps in-house ASICs for internal use

Kevin Wang — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:14:36 GMT

Microsoft is changing how companies evaluate their generative AI investments, as the technology evolves from its beginnings as a productivity tool into deeper uses in core business workflows. In addition to token consumption and model costs, Microsoft Taiwan general manager Sean Pien points out that corporations are also examining how AI actually benefits workflows and innovation, making return-on-investment (ROI) evaluations harder to judge solely on the basis of time or labor savings.

ASRock Industrial's game-streaming win signals longer revenue tail, but supply risks remain

Jingyue Hsiao — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:14:07 GMT

ASRock Industrial has secured a large North American game-streaming services project that could extend well into 2027, according to chairman James Lee. The industrial PC maker said the deal supports a long-term customer deployment, even as component shortages, rising prices, and staged ordering continue to cloud the near-term revenue picture.

LSTC links with Rapidus to revive Japan's advanced chipmaking

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:13:39 GMT

Japan's Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC) is building a public-private-academic framework around Rapidus, which plans to mass-produce 2-nanometer chips in 2027, to advance next-generation semiconductor research and talent development and give Japan a unique edge in the global race for advanced process technology.

AMD pushes ROCm for agentic workloads while Intel holds on to OpenVINO

Lily Hess — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:13:14 GMT

Starting in the second half of 2025, as AI agent programs such as OpenClaw, Hermes, Claude, and DeepSeek Harness were launched one after another, a wave of "keeping lobsters" began to emerge around on-device AI models paired with AI agents.

US, China diverge on AI guardrails ahead of Trump-Xi summit

DIGITIMES — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:26:07 GMT

The US and China are moving toward different models for governing increasingly capable artificial intelligence, even as the US proposes a limited safety mechanism with China ahead of President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping's September 24 summit in Washington. AI is expected to be among the issues discussed at the meeting.

SKC raises Absolics stake to 82% as glass substrates remain in testing

DIGITIMES — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:07:57 GMT

SKC is increasing its investment in its US glass substrate subsidiary Absolics, raising its stake to more than 82%, as the South Korean materials group commits more capital to a business that remains in customer evaluation and testing ahead of volume production.

Engineering over panic: Jensen Huang's pragmatic vision for the future of AI

Yunnie Cheng — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:53:10 GMT

In a 46-minute interview on CBS, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed back against apocalyptic warnings regarding artificial intelligence (AI). He urged the industry to focus on rigorous engineering and safe product delivery rather than apocalyptic fearmongering.