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Friday 4 September 2026

Chunghwa Precision Test sees ASIC revenue overtaking GPU by 2027

Chunghwa Precision Test Technology said demand for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) is driving a surge in advanced testing interface business, while ASIC revenue is set to grow rapidly and catch up with GPU sales. CEO Shui-Ke Huang said GPU products remain the mainstream in the HPC chip market and the company's main revenue source, with US customers also serving as its largest clients.

Friday 4 September 2026

K&S targets CPO, CoPoS growth with expanded TCB advanced packaging roadmap

Singapore-based semiconductor packaging equipment maker Kulicke and Soffa (K&S) said AI demand is spreading into adjacent applications, lifting 2026 orders for wire bonding equipment and driving shipments to a record high, while the company continues to expand its advanced packaging business.

Friday 4 September 2026

CPO high-density optical interconnects drive E&R's submicron 2D FAU breakthrough

To meet next-generation high-speed optical interconnect demand, fiber array units (FAU) are moving from traditional one-dimensional layouts to high-density two-dimensional (2D) architectures, raising the bar for hole positioning accuracy, micro-hole size, packing density, and process stability. At SEMICON Taiwan 2026, semiconductor equipment maker E&R Engineering unveiled a new ultra-high-precision laser micromachining platform with integrated high-precision motion control, laser drilling, and micromachining technologies.

Friday 4 September 2026

Kyocera completes Nagasaki plant for semiconductor ceramics and packages

Kyocera held a ceremony on September 1 to mark the completion of its Nagasaki Isahaya Plant in Kuremo-machi, Isahaya, Nagasaki. The company says the new manufacturing site will anchor its push into semiconductor-related products. Total investment will reach approximately JPY68 billion (US$424.70 million) by the end of March 2029, according to the company's announcement.

Friday 4 September 2026

Taiwan automation specialist Kenmec targets semiconductor packaging plants with low-clearance OHT, AI digital twins

Rising semiconductor packaging and testing demand is exposing space and logistics constraints at existing plants. Kenmec Mechanical Engineering is targeting the upgrade market with a smart-factory solution combining automated material handling systems (AMHS), overhead hoist transport (OHT), and AI-powered digital twins, allowing packaging and testing facilities to automate without extensive reconstruction.

Friday 4 September 2026

Processor, memory boom could push chip supply chain out of sync, says Yole

Gary Huang, vice president and head of Asia-Pacific research and business development at Yole Group, said the imbalance is already showing signs of what he described as supply-chain "decoupling."

Friday 4 September 2026

Silicon Valley overflow fuels semiconductor boom in California's Capital Region

A surge of multibillion-dollar industrial expansions is quietly transforming California's capital region into a premier domestic semiconductor and advanced technology powerhouse, positioning it as a highly competitive gateway for global tech firms looking to scale beyond an overflowing Silicon Valley.

Friday 4 September 2026

Sumitomo Chemical starts mass production of 4-inch InP wafers for AI data centers

Sumitomo Chemical has started mass production and sales of indium phosphide (InP) epitaxial wafers, a core material for optical semiconductors used in next-generation data centers and high-speed networks. The move could help ease power and data bottlenecks facing AI infrastructure worldwide, as demand rises for faster, more efficient computing and communications.

Friday 4 September 2026

Silicon photonics testing shift could reshape how CPO suppliers win business

As silicon photonics (SiPh) and co-packaged optics (CPO) move toward mass production, suppliers say testing is shifting earlier in the process to catch defects at the wafer stage, protect yields, and preserve data through final assembly. That change is also pushing equipment makers toward team-based bids, with a single integrator likely to coordinate the system.

Friday 4 September 2026

Chip leaders call for end to 'silo mentality' as AI scale-up demands cross-industry collab

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is forcing a radical shift from individual chip design to holistic system-level engineering, requiring competitors and supply chain partners to dismantle organizational silos or face crippling inefficiencies, top industry executives said at SEMICON Taiwan 2026.

Friday 4 September 2026

LB Semicon starts Qualcomm shipments as DDI dependence fades

South Korean OSAT player LB Semicon has begun shipments to Qualcomm Inc., marking a key step in its effort to move beyond a business structure long centered on display driver ICs (DDI) and expand into system and power semiconductors.

Friday 4 September 2026

Taiwan to expand industrial land for AI hardware boom

Taiwan's government says it will expand industrial land development to meet surging demand for AI infrastructure hardware, as global suppliers race to add capacity through 2027. Premier Jung-tai Cho said the government is already seeing strong demand from companies looking to build more plants in Taiwan, including semiconductor, packaging and testing, memory, substrate, and equipment makers, as well as foreign investors such as Nvidia and Micron Technology.

Friday 4 September 2026

Electroninks, Merck, Qualipoly build advanced packaging ecosystem

Electroninks, a global provider of metal-composite conductive inks and advanced semiconductor packaging materials, has formed a strategic partnership with Merck and Taiwan-based Qualipoly Chemical to offer advanced packaging customers a more complete, faster, and more efficient integrated service.

Thursday 3 September 2026

CHPT spans wafer to system-level testing

Chunghwa Precision Test Tech showcased a range of test interface solutions for AI chips and high-performance computing (HPC) at SEMICON Taiwan 2026, including AI probe cards, memory probe cards, high-pin-count probe cards, and a high-power burn-in board for AI ASICs.

Thursday 3 September 2026

China chip tool makers expand beyond import substitution at CSEAC 2026

China's semiconductor equipment industry is moving beyond replacing imported tools at mature nodes, with CSEAC 2026 highlighting deeper advances in etching, thin-film deposition, cleaning, metrology, advanced packaging and core components.

Thursday 3 September 2026

KEPCO seeks US$18 billion from Samsung, SK Hynix to fund Korea's power grid

Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) has proposed that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix prepay as much as KRW25 trillion (approx. US$18 billion) in electricity bills as South Korea looks for new ways to finance the power infrastructure required for its rapidly expanding semiconductor clusters.

Thursday 3 September 2026

Semiconductor sustainability shifts to cost control as fab resource demand surges

Sustainability is not just good for communities and the environment but also good for business. This is the message from a sustainability summit that took place at SEMICON Taiwan this week, with water management and equipment providers seeking to link water recycling, tool upgrades, and efficiency-improving automation to measurable cost savings.

Thursday 3 September 2026

Broadcom says CPO fits scale-out better than scale-up

Broadcom Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Core Switching Group Asad Khamisy said at the Semicon Taiwan 2026 master forum that co-packaged optics (CPO) is not necessarily the best answer for scale-up networking, arguing that scale-out applications offer higher value and can cut power consumption by about 70% compared with pluggable optical modules.

Thursday 3 September 2026

Zeiss deepens Taiwan bet as advanced chip packaging raises the stakes for inspection tools

Zeiss is expanding its Taiwan presence as artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates demand for smaller chips, vertical stacking, and 2.5D and 3D heterogeneous integration. The shift is increasing the need for metrology, inspection, and failure analysis, and Zeiss is planning a semiconductor innovation center in northern Taiwan to support validation and application development.

Thursday 3 September 2026

Solomon leverages AI vision and optical tech to tap semiconductor inspection market

Solomon Technology, a Taiwanese artificial intelligence (AI) 3D vision company, is showcasing two key inspection applications that integrate its core AI vision and optical technologies at Semicon Taiwan 2026. The applications include full-wafer warpage detection inside front-opening unified pods (FOUP)/cassettes and through-glass via (TGV) aperture defect inspection technology, aimed at preventing equipment downtime during manufacturing processes and ensuring the yield and quality of next-generation advanced packaging.

Thursday 3 September 2026

TSMC doubles down on equipment purchase as AI demand is outpacing semiconductor supply chain planning

TSMC says surging AI demand is stretching the global chip industry beyond its usual planning cycle, with fast-changing procurement needs, labor shortages, and infrastructure constraints affecting markets far beyond Taiwan. The company is expanding aggressively, but executives say the pace of demand is still outrunning the ecosystem's ability to respond.

Thursday 3 September 2026

Intel pre-funds EMIB-T and CPU capacity, will address DRAM through partners rather than fabs

Intel's US$23 billion equity raise in August was pre-funding for a capacity build driven by demand and process confidence rather than distress, chief financial officer David Zinsner said, committing Intel to equipping fabs in Ireland, Arizona, and Oregon before 14A reaches high-volume manufacturing in 2028. At Deutsche Bank's 2026 Technology Conference on August 27, he put numbers on the advanced packaging business, a data center CPU cycle Intel expects to undersupply into 2028, and a gross margin now "comfortably in the 40s."

Thursday 3 September 2026

AUO unit eyes TSMC ecosystem as merger benefits emerge

AUO Group's AET Corporation (AET), formed in September 2025 through the merger of AUO Envirotech and AUO Digitech, is expanding across the semiconductor supply chain and has reportedly entered the ecosystem of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). After the merger, AET's core operations turned profitable in 2025, and the company is targeting a full-year profit in 2026.

Thursday 3 September 2026

China packaging specialist SJSemi reaches 3.3-reticle 2.5D scale for AI, HBM integration

Chinese advanced packaging provider SJ Semiconductor (SJSemi) has expanded its silicon-interposer-based 2.5D packaging platform to 3.3 times the standard reticle size, enabling denser integration of multiple dies and high-bandwidth memory for AI chips and high-performance computing (HPC).

Thursday 3 September 2026

AI substrate shortages widen as Unimicron signals capacity support through 2029

Unimicron chairman SC Chien said the company is working to ease the tightening shortage of AI substrates as MediaTek seeks capacity support for the next three years, during a public appearance at Semicon Taiwan 2026. Chien appeared alongside ASE Technology CEO Tien Wu, TSMC senior vice president and deputy co-chief operating officer Cliff Hou, MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai and Foxconn chairman Young Liu.

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