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Aug 14
Nvidia Feynman pushes TSMC A16 and CPO ramp

Nvidia is accelerating development and supply-chain alignment for its Feynman generation in the second half of 2028, even as Vera Rubin enters mass production and ramps up. The move is set to drive upgrades at TSMC and could trigger another wave of orders across the global equipment and materials supply chain.

The AI compute landscape was jolted in February 2026 by Taalas, a Canadian startup founded by former AMD and NVIDIA architect Ljubisa Bajic. Emerging with an unconventional "Model-Based" chip architecture, which bypasses software to hardwire model structures, parameters, and weights directly into silicon, Taalas emerged from stealth after raising over US$219 million in cumulative funding. Less than six months later, in early August, AMD agreed to acquire Taalas to bolster its strategic position in AI inference.

TSMC, Micron, ASE, and SPIL continue to expand their advanced-node and OSAT investments, driving stronger first-half 2026 results for Taiwan's fab engineering players — including UIS, MIC, L&K Engineering, YKE and Acter. Together, these five companies, which design and build the specialized facilities and infrastructure that chipmakers rely on, make up what the industry calls the "fab five." With expanding reach into the US, ASEAN and Singapore, the "fab five" have maintained high order backlogs.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly considering repurposing the second line at its next-generation semiconductor R&D complex in Giheung into a foundry send-fab, a shift that would add advanced-node capacity as demand for AI memory strains leading-edge capacity.

Wingtech is entering a sharply different phase after dismantling much of its product-integration business and losing effective control over parts of Nexperia's overseas operations. The Chinese technology group posted a steep first-half revenue contraction and swung to a loss, while legal disputes in the Netherlands and Singapore now complicate its effort to rebuild around semiconductors and a more China-centered supply chain.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEMCO) and LG Innotek pushed their semiconductor package substrate operations close to full capacity in the first half of 2026 as shipments of high-value substrates for AI accelerators, server CPUs, memory and data center networking climbed, company filings and earnings materials show.

Tata's leadership transition may shape the pace of one of India's biggest industrial bets. The group's planned spending on chips, clean energy, and AI data centers is entering a critical stage, but a shift toward tighter capital discipline could slow expansion and alter priorities worldwide.

WaveSplitter posted NT$477 million (US$14.95 million) in consolidated revenue in the first half of 2026, up 47% from a year earlier, and returned to profit as demand from AI data centers and the broader market lifted shipments of high-speed optical communications products. Net profit attributable to the parent company reached NT$6.16 million, compared with a loss in the same period of 2025, while earnings per share came to NT$0.19.

The Trump administration is pressing Apple to find alternatives to Chinese memory suppliers as the company weighs ways to navigate a global memory shortage that has sharply increased component costs, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Hermes Testing Solutions (HTSI), a semiconductor testing solutions provider, stated that continued growth in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), coupled with capacity expansion by major global foundries and packaging and testing companies, has driven demand growth across its three main businesses: probe cards and cleaning materials, testing equipment engineering services, and semiconductor equipment and customized products.

Printed circuit board (PCB) drill bit manufacturer Topoint Technology stated during its second-quarter 2026 earnings call that strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers and high-performance computing (HPC) has significantly improved its product structure. High-end coated drill bit products accounted for 56% of product share in the first half of the year, already exceeding the company's original full-year target of 55%.

This week's most-read stories traced the AI boom across the stack, from supernodes and next-generation memory to liquid cooling, solar power, telecom services and PCB demand. Below are the most-read DIGITIMES stories from the week of August 10-16, 2026.