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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.

Thursday 3 September 2026

Lutnick confirms chip tariffs are coming, with relief tied to manufacturing in America

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has confirmed that the Trump administration is preparing a new round of semiconductor tariffs built around an exemption for companies that manufacture in the US — a design that shifts foreign chipmakers' tariff exposure away from what they ship and onto how much they are willing to spend on American fabs. For Taiwan's suppliers, already committed under a bilateral trade deal, the question is no longer whether tariffs arrive but how large a US footprint buys a company out of them.

Thursday 3 September 2026

CPO material race widens as Taiwan eyes key role

At the Semicon Network Summit 2026, speakers from Marvell, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research's Holst Centre, the UK Semiconductor Centre, and the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA) discussed the future of silicon photonics (SiPh). They said the industry's bottlenecks have shifted from materials to packaging precision, materials platform selection, and the manufacturing tools needed to support both.

Thursday 3 September 2026

SK Hynix wafer purchases jump 104% on AI demand

SK Hynix boosted its silicon wafer purchases in the second quarter of 2026 by more than doubling spending from the previous quarter as it moved early to secure raw materials amid rising wafer prices and surging AI demand. The increase drew more attention than Samsung Electronics' modest rise over the same period.

Thursday 3 September 2026

Samsung to add 1,612 new equipment units at Vietnam chip plant

Samsung Electronics is set to install 1,612 brand-new critical semiconductor back-end processing tools manufactured in South Korea at its factory under construction in Vietnam's Thai Nguyen province. Industry analysts say the move shows Samsung is accelerating efforts to turn Vietnam into a major semiconductor back-end manufacturing base.

Thursday 3 September 2026

LCY Advanced Materials launches wet chemicals for AI chip packaging

LCY Advanced Materials unveiled a new wet chemical solution for next-generation high-density interconnects at the SEMICON Taiwan 2026 Heterogeneous Integration International Summit, as AI and high-performance computing rapidly push semiconductor manufacturing toward system-level scaling centered on advanced packaging.

Thursday 3 September 2026

SEMICON Taiwan 2026: Physical AI drives new demand for multimodal robot sensing

The rise of physical AI is creating a new wave of demand for advanced sensors as robots move from controlled demonstrations toward practical deployment. Industry experts at SEMICON Taiwan 2026 said robots will need increasingly diverse sensing capabilities to perceive, interpret, and respond to complex real-world environments in real time.

Thursday 3 September 2026

Yield has been semiconductor industry's oldest question; now it's Microsoft's test for AI

Microsoft brought the semiconductor industry's own measure of success back to it on Wednesday, and argued that AI will be judged by it.

Wednesday 2 September 2026

Lam Research exec says automated preventive maintenance key to fabs of the future

A senior Lam Research executive told an industry audience this week that the next major leap in semiconductor manufacturing will not come from removing humans entirely from fabs, but from pairing collaborative robots with AI-driven predictive maintenance to close a long-standing gap in fab operations.

Wednesday 2 September 2026

Taiwan's semiconductor ecosystem has the UK taking notes

The UK wants to understand how Taiwan built such a successful semiconductor ecosystem, said Andy McLean, CEO of the UK Semiconductor Center, at a forum organized by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) in Taipei on September 1. It is generally believed that government support, close collaboration among industry, academia and research institutions, and corporate long-term vision are key drivers of Taiwan's semiconductor success.

Wednesday 2 September 2026

Nvidia and Micron top NT$4.4T in Taiwan investment

On the eve of the opening of SEMICON Taiwan 2026, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) hosted the Semicon Network Summit, where President Ching-Te Lai said Nvidia invests and procures more than NT$3 trillion (US$94.4 billion) a year in Taiwan. He added that Micron has invested more than NT$1.4 trillion cumulatively, while AMD has expanded its Taiwan R&D and investment to more than NT$300 billion.

Wednesday 2 September 2026

Semicon Taiwan 2026 to test cloud AI investment boom

Cloud AI capital expenditure continues to shatter market expectations, sparking growing concerns over whether the spending surge is overheating and heading toward a bubble. Semicon Taiwan 2026 may serve as the ultimate litmus test for this debate.

Wednesday 2 September 2026

Indium CEO: packaging, cooling and power are next AI bottlenecks

As AI and high-performance computing (HPC) continue to drive semiconductor advances, industry competition is shifting beyond chip performance toward packaging, cooling, assembly, and power delivery. With GPUs, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and advanced packaging pushing power density higher, chipmakers now face challenges that extend well beyond silicon manufacturing, including managing thermal expansion, warpage, heat dissipation, and reliability across heterogeneously integrated materials.

Wednesday 2 September 2026

TSMC moves into Baipu Industrial Park, boosts advanced packaging

TSMC will set up operations in Kaohsiung's Baipu Industrial Park, helping create Taiwan's first advanced packaging materials and equipment supply-chain cluster. Closely watched by the industry, the move is expected to improve efficiency by 25% to 50% as the company builds a collaborative verification platform with suppliers.

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