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Tuesday 1 September 2026
Samsung weighs HBM4 bonuses as memory, foundry teams align
Samsung Electronics is using a cross-division "One Team" model to develop its sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory, HBM4, but the approach is creating a new challenge for the newly established Device Solutions (DS) special management performance bonus system. Labor and management are now negotiating detailed payout rules to clarify how One Team participants and some contract workers will be rewarded and to prevent employees from being disadvantaged because they belong to different units.
Tuesday 1 September 2026
Luxnet eyes orders through 2028, DCI revenue set to double in 2027
AI-driven demand for optical transceiver modules is rising rapidly, and LuxNet said its business in the second half of 2026 will grow sharply from the first half. With capacity coming online in 2027, revenue from data center interconnect (DCI) products is expected to multiply, driving a leap in overall operations, while 1.6T optical modules are slated to enter mass production in the second half of 2027.
Tuesday 1 September 2026
Chinese OSAT earnings surge on AI packaging demand, but recurring profit tells a narrower story
Five listed Chinese outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers reported first-half 2026 results in the last two weeks of August, showing net profit growth of up to 317%, yet the figures that strip out one-off items reveal a far more uneven recovery — one in which two companies are carrying most of the operating improvement, one is still losing money on its core business, and the sector's capital commitments now run well ahead of what it currently earns.
Tuesday 1 September 2026
China specialty foundry XMC plans fourfold capacity growth around 3D integration, silicon photonics
Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (XMC) has laid out a 10-year expansion strategy centered on 3D integration, silicon photonics (SiPh), and specialty processes, targeting a fourfold increase in production capacity while building a broader semiconductor ecosystem around Wuhan.
Monday 31 August 2026
Gudeng sees double-digit advanced packaging growth from 2027
Demand for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) continues to drive semiconductor process development, with advanced nodes and advanced packaging entering a new cycle of capacity expansion. Gudeng chairman Bill Chiu said on August 31, 2026, that the company's advanced packaging business is expected to post double-digit revenue growth from 2027 as global demand continues to expand.
Monday 31 August 2026
Marvell sees 2027 acceleration in scale-up optics
Marvell said on its fiscal second-quarter of 2027 earnings call that customers are actively planning to deploy scale-up optical solutions as early as 2027, with demand for near-package optics (NPO) now revised higher. The company said copper cabling is increasingly constrained by distance and bandwidth limits as computing systems grow larger, pushing customers to raise the share of optical transmission in their designs.
Monday 31 August 2026
TSMC tackles the AI I/O wall with two COUPE bandwidth paths and deeper heterogeneous integration
TSMC is sharpening its silicon photonics (SiPh) roadmap to address the widening gap between AI compute growth and chip-to-chip data movement, unveiling two bandwidth-scaling paths for its next-generation COUPE platform and outlining a broader role for heterogeneous integration in future co-packaged optics.
Monday 31 August 2026
TSMC sees SiPh going mainstream in 2027
Silicon photonics (SiPh) will become mainstream in 2027, with market share topping 50%, as AI scale-out drives explosive growth in optical transceiver demand, said K.C. Hsu, TSMC's advanced packaging technology development vice president, at the Silicon Photonics Global Summit ahead of SEMICON Taiwan 2026 on August 31.
Monday 31 August 2026
Gudeng chairman says trust underpins Taiwan supply chains amid Unimicron row
Gudeng Precision Industrial chairman Bill Chiu said on August 31, 2026, that trust is the core foundation of Taiwan's place in the global supply chain, as he commented on sensitive issues including alleged country-of-origin labeling violations involving PCB maker Unimicron. He said Taiwanese firms gain opportunities in global markets because of Western customers' trust, warning that undermining that trust would be self-defeating.
Monday 31 August 2026
Shanghai's 15th Five-Year Plan bets on chips, AI, advanced packaging
On August 26, the Shanghai municipal government released its 15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Strategic Emerging Industries, setting a target for added value in strategic emerging industries to reach CNY2.1 trillion (approx. US$312.5 billion) by 2030. The plan puts ICs, biopharmaceuticals, and artificial intelligence (AI) at the center of the city's industrial strategy, while shifting policy focus from expansion to higher-value areas such as advanced chips, advanced packaging, industrial software, and critical materials.
Monday 31 August 2026
South Korea risks 'HBM 2.0' trap in emerging CPO market
Co-packaged optics (CPO) is emerging as a critical next-generation technology for AI infrastructure, but unless South Korea strengthens its integration and validation capabilities, it risks being left with component-level capabilities while overseas players retain control of platforms and higher-value parts of the ecosystem.
Monday 31 August 2026
China's silicon wafer makers report profit gains of varying quality
Seven Chinese silicon wafer producers reported first-half 2026 results in the second half of August, indicating an uneven sector recovery. Several semiconductor-grade wafer makers swung from losses to reported profits, though how much of that improvement came from core operations rather than one-off items varies widely by company. The two solar-wafer producers in the group, meanwhile, remain far deeper in the red amid a separate, unrelated downturn.
Monday 31 August 2026
Taisic Materials produces Taiwan's first 12-inch SiC boule with homegrown crystal growth furnace
Taisic Materials, a subsidiary of Kenmec Mechanical Engineering, has successfully produced Taiwan's first 12-inch silicon carbide (SiC) boule using a crystal growth furnace independently developed by Kenmec.
Monday 31 August 2026
Weekly news roundup: US pressures Korea chip investment, MediaTek wins Google TPU, Apple debuts 2nm M6
Semiconductor investment, AI chips, advanced packaging and data center infrastructure dominated the week, with South Korea facing US pressure, India scaling chip manufacturing, and Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Taiwan suppliers advancing new AI and 2nm strategies. Below are the most-read DIGITIMES stories from the week of August 24-30, 2026.
Monday 31 August 2026
France draws Taiwanese investment projects worth EUR7.5 billion
Taiwanese investment projects announced or under implementation in France are worth about EUR7.5 billion (approx. US$8.7 billion), according to the French Office in Taipei, led by ProLogium's battery project and Foxconn's expansion into advanced semiconductor packaging and AI infrastructure.
Monday 31 August 2026
India roundup: India broadens semiconductor and AI ambitions across manufacturing, design, materials and data centers
India's semiconductor ambitions are expanding from packaging and testing to chip design, materials, mobile devices and data centers. New investments by CG Power, Infineon, Foxconn, Samsung and LG highlight rising industrial activity, while skills shortages, environmental constraints and import dependence remain challenges. Government incentives increasingly seek deeper domestic capabilities and higher value creation.
Monday 31 August 2026
Podcast highlights: Xiaomi's 3nm chip cap, HBM in Malaysia, and Nvidia's margin tradeoff
Can Xiaomi's in-house chip reach 2nm? Is HBM rerouting to Malaysia TSMC giving Intel a pass? Can Nvidia hold a 75% gross margin or protect market share? Ahead of Apple's September 10 event, the pre-event technology lull was anything but quiet, and DIGITIMES analyst Luke Lin broke down three stories and the industry logic behind them.
Saturday 29 August 2026
Samsung bets on JWMT: can glass substrates flip the script for South Korea in advanced packaging?
As artificial intelligence (AI) chips continue to scale up in physical size, semiconductor competition is rapidly extending beyond front-end node scaling into advanced packaging. The South Korean semiconductor industry is eyeing glass substrates as its next major breakthrough, aiming to shore up its lagging packaging ecosystem and secure greater influence in AI accelerators, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and system-on-chip integration markets.
Saturday 29 August 2026
Inside TSMC's 238-page sustainability report: nine things that matter more than they look
Buried in 238 pages of targets and inventories are the things nobody puts in a press release: a formal corporate policy on shoe soles, a fish that lives in a fab, a lizard evacuation in Germany, and a workforce that is quietly out-reproducing the rest of Taiwan by a factor of four. Nine small stories from the world's most important chipmaker.
Friday 28 August 2026
ASIC makers see CSP orders stay strong through 2028
The four major US cloud service providers (CSPs) have already rewritten their 2026 capital expenditure records, and ASIC vendors are increasingly confident that demand will remain strong through 2028 as customer spending and supply-chain visibility both extend farther out.
Friday 28 August 2026
China chip profits jump 18.5-fold on AI demand; advanced-node self-sufficiency seen at 66% by 2035
China's AI investment boom is translating into sharply higher semiconductor profits while accelerating a longer-term expansion of domestic advanced-node capacity, memory production and chipmaking equipment.
Friday 28 August 2026
AI packaging race heats up: Taiwan OSATs plan US$14.6 billion capex

The AI investment cycle is spreading from leading-edge wafer fabrication into semiconductor packaging and testing, with Taiwan's largest outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) providers preparing a fresh round of capacity expansion.

Friday 28 August 2026
Samsung diverges from TSMC on FOPLP: retains 415×510mm panel size, targets 2028 mass production
Samsung Electronics' packaging technology lead, Lee Hee-seok, outlined the company's advanced semiconductor packaging roadmap at Advanced Semiconductor Packaging & Chiplet Show (ASPS) 2026. Beyond sharing target production timelines and specifications for fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) and glass substrates, Lee emphasized AI's pivotal role in driving packaging R&D forward.
Friday 28 August 2026
Long-term contracts tie up InP capacity due to data center optics demand
Compound semiconductor supply-chain players say China has recently eased some substrate export controls, but the upgrade of high-frequency transmission in AI data centers toward 200G and 400G has made optical communications a key technology breakthrough, creating a severe indium phosphide (InP) substrate shortage and sparking a trend toward signing long-term contracts and locking up capacity to secure stable supply.
Friday 28 August 2026
Analysis: Nvidia beats, Taiwan wins — and hyperscalers race to make AI pay
Nvidia reported revenue of US$96.221 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2027, more than doubling from a year earlier and underscoring the global rush to build AI infrastructure and expand computing power. The results also signal a continued boost for Taiwan's suppliers as hyperscalers shift purchases from Blackwell to Blackwell Ultra and Vera Rubin.