The 27th China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE 2026) will run September 9-11 in Shenzhen, bringing together more than 5,000 exhibitors from over 30 countries and regions as AI infrastructure, high-speed optical communications and AR/VR applications reshape the optoelectronics industry.

Explosive capacity expansions by memory giants across South Korea, the United States, and China are driving surging demand for tungsten hexafluoride (WF6), a specialty electronic gas. Simultaneously, China's export controls on critical metals like tungsten powder have sent international tungsten prices skyrocketing.

If Taiwan's government is determined enough, finding funding and land for the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) or the National Institutes of Applied Research (NIAR) is not necessarily the hardest part. The more difficult question comes later: who will shoulder the enormous and recurring cost of keeping advanced semiconductor research infrastructure running?

TSMC Executive Vice President and Co-Chief Operating Officer Y.P. Chin was named an Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) Laureate on September 7, marking another milestone in a semiconductor career spanning nearly four decades.

Infineon COO Alexander Gorski said the company is balancing in-house production, outsourcing, and global expansion as supply-chain resilience becomes a key customer requirement. In an exclusive interview with DIGITIMES at SEMICON Taiwan 2026, he also discussed chip shortages and progress at Infineon's new Dresden fab.

SK Hynix is considering accelerating investment in South Korea's planned Gwangju semiconductor cluster so that development proceeds alongside its ongoing Yongin buildout, rather than waiting for Yongin to advance further, according to Dealsite, citing industry sources. The potential overlap is raising a key question for semiconductor equipment suppliers: whether Gwangju will generate additional orders or absorb some spending previously expected for later stages of Yongin.

As AI processors advance toward higher compute density, larger package footprints, and increased bandwidth demands, advanced packaging and high-speed data transmission have emerged as critical bottlenecks for AI infrastructure. Corning is expanding the deployment of advanced glass solutions across packaging, glass substrates, and optical communications, while partnering with ecosystem players to qualify next-generation glass substrates and through-glass via (TGV) technologies.

TSMC's investment in a fab in Germany's Free State of Saxony has drawn close attention from across Europe. Eva Ins Obergfell, Rector of Leipzig University, one of Germany's leading universities, recently visited Taiwan and toured National Taiwan University and National Tsing Hua University, among others, to explore ideas for research cooperation. Experts said Taiwan and Germany had opportunities to build long-term partnerships in quantum sensing technology, semiconductor materials processes and cross-border biomedical research.

This year's SEMICON Taiwan saw companies worldwide flock to Taipei to learn new industry developments and score potential business opportunities. Many came from elsewhere in Asia, but some came from as far as California, where business leaders highlighted the complementary relationship between the state's research and start-up ecosystem and Taiwan's manufacturing capabilities.

Taiwan plans to deepen its role in global technology supply chains as demand for AI chips, advanced packaging, and memory tightens worldwide. A new policy agenda aims to bolster semiconductor output, expand AI deployment, and strengthen resilience in industries that affect manufacturers, investors, and consumers across regions.

As the global race for artificial intelligence (AI) consumes vast oceans of electricity and pushes modern utility grids to the brink, a team of California researchers is looking to biological neuroscience to build an entirely new class of energy-efficient microelectronics. Their objective is straightforward but radical: reverse-engineer the human brain to solve the semiconductor industry's looming power and thermal bottlenecks.

The largest engineering school on the US West Coast by enrollment is training engineers for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and pioneering advanced 3D packaging design.

Four major US technology companies have committed a combined US$2 billion to investments across South Korea's semiconductor materials, equipment, and clean energy sectors. The move is expected to reinforce critical supply chain resilience between the US and South Korea while providing momentum for the South Korean government's three strategic "Mega Projects."

Infineon COO Alexander Gorski told DIGITIMES in an exclusive interview at SEMICON Taiwan 2026 that the company's new Dresden fab is ramping at twice the pace of prior expansions, boosted by AI tools and a single virtual fab strategy. He said the facility could reach full capacity in two to three years as demand from the market and from AI takes off.

India's most senior semiconductor policymakers came to Taipei with an argument aimed squarely at the Taiwanese supply chain: the country's chip program is meant to add redundancy to an over-concentrated global industry, not to substitute imports behind a wall. For Taiwanese materials, gas, equipment and packaging firms, that reframes India from a distant end market into a second production base their own customers are already asking them to staff.

SEMICON Taiwan 2027 will be held on August 18 to 20, about one month earlier than its usual September timing. The organizer noted that venue planning needs instead drive the schedule change

Artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) are driving the global semiconductor industry into a new expansion cycle, with fabs extending from Taiwan to the US, Japan, Singapore, and Europe. Demand is rising for facility engineering services, including hookup and equipment installation, and semiconductor engineering services provider Yaho System Technology (Yaho) is moving fast to capture this market.

Infineon COO Alexander Gorski told DIGITIMES in an exclusive interview at Semicon Taiwan 2026 that the current global chip shortage is unlike the one during Covid-19 and will take longer to resolve. He also discussed progress on Infineon's new Dresden plant, in-house manufacturing, outsourcing, and the company's global footprint.

DeepSeek is reportedly planning to purchase 160,000 Huawei chips for its large 1 GW data center currently under construction in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. This would make it among the largest clusters of Huawei chips deployed to date, as the Chinese authorities attempt to wean the country off Nvidia chips, but still struggle with insufficient domestic manufacturing capacity.

Taiwanese companies are only at the start of a broader overseas investment cycle, as Washington signals possible new semiconductor tariffs and Taipei moves to deepen industrial links with Europe, Japan, and ASEAN. Officials say the island's chipmakers are responding to pressure from the US, while also broadening their global strategy to reduce risk and strengthen supply chains.

China's Naura Technology has demonstrated a selective etching process for 64-layer 3D DRAM structures, potentially giving domestic memory makers another route to raise transistor density while access to advanced EUV lithography remains restricted.

JM-Applied, a Taiwanese semiconductor gas equipment manufacturer and supply chain member for Micron and TSMC, said on September 4 that revenue in the first half of 2026 exceeded NT$600 million (approx. US$18.98 million), up more than 50% year-over-year. Growth was driven by the continued demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), which is driving global semiconductor expansion and boosting demand for gas supply systems and equipment at wafer fabs.

India is selling its semiconductor build-out abroad as a hedge against an over-concentrated supply chain. The officials running it are unusually candid that the hedge cannot be built without the country it hedges against. Asked at a media briefing in Taipei on 4 September how New Delhi views the role of Chinese companies in India's chip and electronics supply chain, S. Krishnan, secretary of India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, opened with a line that would be politically awkward in most capitals: "We need to be realistic."

AI infrastructure and semiconductor supply chains led reader interest this week, from Taiwan's manufacturing recovery and Nexperia's legal battle to Sandisk's HBF, Micron's HBM expansion, and Marvell's silicon photonics roadmap. Samsung also refreshed its smartphone lineup with the Galaxy S26 FE. Below are the most-read DIGITIMES stories from the week of August 31-September 06, 2026.