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Saturday 13 June 2026
Commentary: Precision vs. breadth—Why Taiwan's lens giants have opposite CPO playbooks

Optical industry leaders Largan and Genius Electronic Optical (GSEO) have recently discussed progress in co-packaged optics (CPO), a key non-smartphone growth driver, and their strategies differ sharply. As customer demand and orders become clearer and more firmly secured, both companies have also turned markedly more confident, having taken a more cautious stance in prior quarters.

Saturday 13 June 2026
Commentary: Five things I noticed at SuperAI Singapore that the keynotes did not tell you
Ten thousand attendees. One hundred and fifty speakers. Three exhibition floors. Two days. SuperAI Singapore 2026 generated enough keynote content, panel discussion, and product announcements to fill a week of coverage. But some of the most telling observations from the conference floor had nothing to do with any of it. Here is what I actually noticed.
Saturday 13 June 2026
Linkotech: FOPLP rollout is gaining early traction

Linkotech said its fan-out panel-level packaging rollout is showing early momentum, with certification from a North American low-Earth-orbit satellite communications customer and first equipment deliveries completed in the first half of 2026. The company said related sales could quickly rise to double digits as a share of annual revenue, with implications for supply chains worldwide.

Saturday 13 June 2026
India eases import rules in special economic zones to boost semiconductor manufacturing

India has expanded exemptions from mandatory quality certification requirements for imports by Special Economic Zone (SEZ) units and developers, a policy change that industry observers say could ease the establishment of semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the country.

Saturday 13 June 2026
Commentary: The cost of over-concentration—How TSMC's liquidity dominance is reshaping Taiwan's banking system
TSMC's financial dominance has reached unprecedented heights, with the world's leading foundry posting first-quarter 2026 profit of over NT$570 billion (approx. US$18.04 billion) and holding an immense NT$3 trillion cash reserve. By June 11, 2026, its market value surged to NT$58.3 trillion, triggering a bizarre banking phenomenon where local financial institutions offer TSMC deposit rates that exceed its borrowing costs.
Friday 12 June 2026
Shin-Etsu plans rare earth plant in Japan to counter China supply curbs

Shin-Etsu Chemical plans to build a new rare earth production facility in Fukui Prefecture, aiming to expand domestic smelting capacity and reduce Japan's reliance on China for materials critical to electric vehicle and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, according to Nikkei and Kyodo News.

Friday 12 June 2026
Samsung's packaging gap clouds chip comeback as TSMC, Intel push ahead

Samsung Electronics is regaining ground in high-bandwidth memory and foundry services, but advanced packaging remains a weak point in its bid to capture a larger share of the AI chip supply chain, according to industry sources and Korean media reports.

Friday 12 June 2026
Taiwan compute suppliers rise on booming AI demand, with several firms extending strong growth
Taiwan's semiconductor and electronics supply-chain companies continued to post generally firm sales in May, according to monthly revenue data and company disclosures, with the strongest accumulated growth concentrated in AI-linked logic, testing, substrate, and copper-clad laminate suppliers.
Friday 12 June 2026
South Korea concrete strike clouds chip supply: Samsung, SK Hynix fabs construction reportedly stalls

A strike by South Korea's ready-mix concrete transport union is disrupting major semiconductor construction sites and raising concerns about wider industrial spillovers. If the stoppage continues, delays could spread beyond building projects and affect production schedules that matter to global technology supply chains and investors.

Friday 12 June 2026
Silicon Labs expands India presence as smart infrastructure demand grows ahead of TI acquisition

Silicon Labs is deepening its presence in India through expanded research operations and a greater commercial focus on smart infrastructure applications, even as the US-based wireless chipmaker prepares for an acquisition by Texas Instruments.

Friday 12 June 2026
Google weighs Samsung's role in next AI chip as TSMC capacity tightens
Google is considering using Samsung Electronics to manufacture part of a future artificial intelligence (AI) chip, a move that would mark a notable shift in the US tech group's supply chain as demand for advanced AI silicon strains capacity at TSMC.
Friday 12 June 2026
PCIM 2026: Accepting local component deficits for system-level benefits

In power electronics engineering, Silicon Carbide (SiC) companies are competing to achieve the absolute lowest thermal resistance (Rth), with the mindset that lower heat signature equates a superior system. However, at PCIM Europe 2026, a collaborative project between Rohm Semiconductor, Schweizer Electronic, and eMoveUs GmbH exposed a revolutionary counter-intuitive shift in design philosophy: willingly accepting a localized thermal performance deficit to ultimately achieve dominant system-level advantages.

Friday 12 June 2026
Sigurd revenue hits record as AI and chip demand lift operations

Sigurd announced that its May revenue reached a historic high, driven by overseas customer expansion, stronger demand for AI-related chips, and rising use of advanced packaging capacity. The result suggests continued momentum in global semiconductor supply chains, with implications for networking, memory, and high-performance computing markets worldwide.

Friday 12 June 2026
TSMC hit by US patent suit, Taiwan ministry pledges support
TSMC has been drawn into a patent infringement complaint in the US by Ireland-based patent licensing firms Longitude Licensing and Marlin Semiconductor. The companies have claimed that the US government could block imports to the US of chips made by TSMC as a result of the case, and have enlisted several members of Congress to support their position, drawing market attention.
Friday 12 June 2026
Hanmi Semiconductor to invest in SpaceX as Terafab bets grow
Hanmi Semiconductor plans to invest KRW50 billion (US$32.81 million) in SpaceX, highlighting how space, satellites, and artificial intelligence infrastructure are increasingly linked. For global readers, the deal signals how semiconductor suppliers are positioning themselves around next-generation supply chains, customer demand, and the expansion of AI-driven industrial ecosystems.
Friday 12 June 2026
MediaTek May 2026 revenue rises nearly 5% ahead of ASIC ramp

MediaTek reported May 2026 revenue of NT$47.43 billion (approx. US$1.5 billion), up 1.49% from the previous month and 4.99% from a year earlier. Cumulative revenue for the first five months of 2026 totaled NT$243.32 billion, down 1.59% from the same period last year.

Friday 12 June 2026
Cadence deepens Intel Foundry partnership on next-generation chip design
Cadence and Intel Foundry are expanding their collaboration on advanced chip design, a move that could affect future semiconductors used in devices and data centers worldwide. The agreement aims to improve performance, power efficiency, and design readiness as chipmakers race to bring next-generation technologies to market.
Friday 12 June 2026
Malaysia, Japan expand rare earth and energy cooperation

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim concluded a three-day visit to Japan, during which he met with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. The two leaders pledged to strengthen cooperation in critical minerals.

Friday 12 June 2026
HPSP reportedly receives test equipment order for Musk's Terafab

Elon Musk's planned Terafab chipmaking project has taken an early equipment-sourcing step, with South Korean equipment maker HPSP reportedly receiving a purchase order for high-pressure hydrogen annealing equipment.

Friday 12 June 2026
SuperAI 2026: From turbine backlogs to copper limits, AMD maps infrastructure walls closing in on AI
The artificial intelligence (AI) industry is expanding at a pace that the physical world cannot match, and the gap between digital demand and real-world supply is widening across every layer of the infrastructure stack, from power generation to chip manufacturing to data center construction. That was the assessment of Sachin Hindupur, global strategy and operations leader at AMD, in a presentation at SuperAI Singapore 2026 on Thursday.
Friday 12 June 2026
Chinese chip foundry United Nova bets US$3B on AI power, optical interconnects
United Nova Technology (UNT) is expanding from automotive and industrial chips into AI server power management and optical interconnects through a CNY20 billion (US$3 billion) 12-inch mixed-signal fab project.
Friday 12 June 2026
Official think tank lays out 2035 roadmap to reduce India's reliance on imported chips
India's official think tank NITI Aayog has outlined a 2035 roadmap for India to become a more central part of the global semiconductor industry, warning that continued reliance on imports leaves the country exposed to cost, supply, and security risks.
Friday 12 June 2026
PCIM 2026: Overcoming thermal warping in direct-cooled EV power modules
As wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors like silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) take the lead in electric vehicle (EV) powertrains, electronics packaging engineers are facing a thermodynamic reckoning. To extract maximum performance from these high-frequency, high-efficiency chips, the industry is driving an architectural shift: shrinking inverter volumes, eliminating heavy copper baseplates, and mounting molded power packages directly to liquid-cooled water jackets. However, this high-power-density approach exposes a fragile structural vulnerability. When mismatched materials are bonded under extreme manufacturing conditions, the physics of thermal expansion can tear a high-value power module apart before it ever leaves the assembly line.
Friday 12 June 2026
Taiwan OSAT firms gain from AI chip demand and foundry spillover
The global push for AI and HPC chips is tightening advanced packaging capacity and lifting orders for outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers. For international customers and supply chains, the shift suggests stronger demand for Taiwan's packaging and testing firms, alongside a broader rebalancing of semiconductor production.
Friday 12 June 2026
Power semiconductors race to cut resistance for GPU cooling
Power semiconductors are taking on a central role as AI data centers move from 800V high-voltage input down through multiple power-conversion stages to the ultra-low voltages used by chips. After the post-pandemic inventory correction, industry players say power semiconductors have shifted "from a supporting role to the lead" under the new AI high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power architecture.