Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are each reviewing locations in South Korea's Honam region for new semiconductor packaging plants, according to The Elec and Hankyung, citing industry sources, as the two companies look for ways to add back-end capacity beyond their existing manufacturing hubs.
Taiwan's listed semiconductor manufacturers reported strong May revenue figures, with a sweeping recovery in DRAM prices and rising artificial intelligence infrastructure spending lifting most of the sector's 27 tracked companies to double-digit year-on-year gains.
The global semiconductor and high-tech manufacturing landscape continues to undergo structural realignment. An increasing number of Chinese technology and semiconductor companies are adopting a dual-location strategy, establishing corporate entities in Singapore while locating manufacturing operations in Malaysia in an effort to reduce their association with the "Made in China" label.
A teardown of Huawei's latest Mate 80 Pro Max smartphone has put China's semiconductor progress back under scrutiny, after analysis showed the HiSilicon Kirin 9030 processor was made on SMIC's third-generation 7nm-class N+3 process with a local metal pitch narrower than that of Intel's 18A chip used in Panther Lake.
Samsung Electronics' foundry division plans to open its Multi-Project Wafer, or MPW, service to its 2nm process next year, giving South Korean fabless chip designers access to one of the most advanced foundry nodes being commercialized without having to pay for a full wafer run, according to ZDNet Korea and iNews24.
Imec, ASML and TSMC have demonstrated a 300mm integration route for 2D-material n-type and p-type field-effect transistors, marking a step toward moving atomically thin channel materials from laboratory devices closer to semiconductor manufacturing.
Samsung Electronics has demonstrated a 3D stacked transistor structure with a 42-nanometer gate pitch, a research milestone that extends vertical integration, long used in memory chips, into logic semiconductors.
