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Monday 7 September 2026
Exclusive: Infineon COO says chip shortage recovery will take longer
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.
Monday 7 September 2026
DeepSeek plans to buy 160,000 Huawei chips as China aims to wean itself off Nvidia
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.
Monday 7 September 2026
Analysis: Under tariff threats, Taiwan chipmakers hedge beyond US
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.
Monday 7 September 2026
Naura 3D DRAM etching breakthrough could give CXMT a new path beyond EUV
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.
Monday 7 September 2026
JM-Applied sees gas equipment demand surge on AI expansion, order book exceeds NT$3 billion
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.
Monday 7 September 2026
India says it cannot build electronics without China and has started easing the rules to prove it
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."
Monday 7 September 2026
Weekly news roundup: AI memory race heats up, Taiwan manufacturing rebounds, Nexperia rift deepens
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.
Monday 7 September 2026
Orphans of the liquid cooling age: xMEMS targets data center 'hot spots,' eyes 2027 smartphone and smartglasses cooling ports
As the world's most powerful enterprise data centers undergo a massive migration to liquid cooling to support high-power artificial intelligence processors, a Silicon Valley chipmaker is warning of a growing class of "thermal orphans"—localized, low-power components that are left out in the cold.
Monday 7 September 2026
China's JCET seeks US$968M for AI-driven packaging expansion

JCET Group is preparing a CNY6.5 billion (approx. US$968 million) private share placement to expand advanced packaging and testing capacity across high-performance computing (HPC), power modules, wafer-level packaging and memory, sharpening its exposure to AI infrastructure and China's domestic semiconductor supply chain.

Monday 7 September 2026
No foundry price relief before 2027 as utilisation nears 90%

AI demand is driving a broader repricing cycle across the foundry industry in 2026. Tightness that began at leading-edge nodes is spreading into mature and specialty processes, lifting wafer prices, utilisation and downstream chip costs.

Monday 7 September 2026
Experts say subsidies can't buy semiconductor competitiveness
At a forum jointly hosted by DSET and SEMI during SEMICON Taiwan this year, Glenn D. Tiffert of the Hoover Institution, Kioxia Holdings board member Emiko Higashi, and NRC reporter Marc Hijink offered views on national semiconductor policy from the perspectives of the US policy community, corporate boardrooms, and Europe's industrial front line.
Monday 7 September 2026
AI is driving force behind 'Moore's Law on steroids,' says Merck's Benjamin Hein
AI is driving a new wave of technological demand and changing how the semiconductor industry innovates, according to Benjamin Hein, member of the executive board and CEO of the Electronics Business Sector at Merck. As AI becomes an integral part of semiconductor innovation, future competitive advantages in the industry will depend less on any single process or material, but rather on the ability to combine materials, processes, packaging, metrology, and software into complete processes. In this sense, AI-driven growth in the semiconductor industry is like "Moore's Law on steroids," and collaboration will become the industry's next Moore's Law.
Monday 7 September 2026
India roundup: India expands chip ambitions with full Semicon 2.0 notification

India's technology sector is gaining momentum across semiconductors, connectivity, AI payments, PCs, tablets and refurbished smartphones, as policy support and local manufacturing attract investment. However, supply-chain diversification, margin pressure, cautious demand and VinFast's manufacturing pause highlight challenges facing India's broader technology ambitions.

Sunday 6 September 2026
BenQ Materials targets CPO in semiconductor push
BenQ Materials Group has formally positioned semiconductor materials as a key future growth driver, using its existing coating, membrane, foaming, and adhesive technologies to move into wafer manufacturing, back-end packaging, and co-packaged optics (CPO). With chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) cleaning brush rollers and wafer dicing tape already shipping, the group views 2026 as a new starting point for its semiconductor business, with more visible growth expected from 2027.
Sunday 6 September 2026
TEL sees AI-driven packaging, memory demand reshaping Taiwan strategy
Tokyo Electron's Taiwan president said AI is pushing semiconductor demand into new areas, with advanced packaging, DRAM, high-bandwidth memory, and NAND flash all gaining momentum. He said Taiwan remains central to the industry's supply chain, and TEL plans to deepen local technology, service, and research ties.
Sunday 6 September 2026
Hanmi's 2.5D bonders pass Taiwan foundry qualification as packaging outsourcing expands
South Korea's Hanmi Semiconductor has reportedly begun supplying 2.5D packaging bonders to an unnamed Taiwanese foundry after the equipment passed mass-production qualification, giving the company an important production foothold as Taiwan's advanced-packaging supply chain expands beyond foundry-owned lines.
Sunday 6 September 2026
Tongtai doubles semiconductor orders on AI data-center demand
Facing rapid demand expansion across the semiconductor and AI industries, Tongtai Group (TT Group) has aggressively promoted an import-substitution and localization strategy in recent years. The group is extending its traditional machine tool expertise into hard and brittle material processing, advanced packaging, and smart manufacturing production-line solutions required for semiconductor fabrication.
Sunday 6 September 2026
Podcast highlights: SoIC vs CoWoS, HBM5 hybrid bonding, and EMIB-T's yield problem
In a podcast, DIGITIMES analyst Luke Lin said hybrid bonding is drawing fresh attention at SEMICON Taiwan 2026 and could become a key driver of advanced packaging capacity expansion in 2027 to 2028.
Sunday 6 September 2026
Taiwan chip equipment maker Scientech sees orders into 2028, may turn away customers in 2027
AI and high-performance computing (HPC) demand is extending order visibility for Taiwanese semiconductor equipment supplier Scientech into 2028, while capacity constraints may force the company to become more selective about orders in 2027.
Sunday 6 September 2026
Trumpf CTO says advanced packaging reshapes semiconductor equipment race
AI and high-performance computing (HPC) demand is changing the semiconductor industry's technology and investment priorities. As chip power consumption, computing density, and data transfer requirements rise rapidly, competition is no longer limited to front-end process scaling; 3D stacking, advanced packaging, high-density interconnects, thermal management, and memory technologies are also becoming more important.
Saturday 5 September 2026
NYCU wins Nobel laureate for Taiwan job card
National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) has recruited 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate Arieh Warshel to work in Taiwan, and the National Development Council (NDC) has issued him an Employment Gold Card enabling him to work and reside in Taiwan. It is the first time a Nobel laureate has received the card since the program began.
Saturday 5 September 2026
Semicon Taiwan 2026: A windmill in the die bonder, and a Dutch bet on photonics
Dutch equipment maker ITEC used Semicon Taiwan to promote a die-bonding architecture that it says triples throughput over earlier versions of the design by removing the largest source of idle motion in chip assembly: the return trip.
Saturday 5 September 2026
Taiwan semiconductor output targets NT$8 trillion
As Semicon Taiwan kicked off at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) announced that, based on forecasts compiled from multiple research institutions, Taiwan's semiconductor industry output could top NT$8 trillion (approx. US$252.6 billion) in 2026. Advanced equipment and materials, historically local industry weak points, are also making remarkable gains, with domestic equipment output projected to reach NT$270 billion (US$8.5 billion).
Saturday 5 September 2026
Topco targets optical comms, cooling as copper gives way
System integration remains a key hurdle as the AI chip industry pushes for higher power efficiency and faster transmission speeds, drawing intense attention to when short-reach optical communications between racks and chips will enter practical use. Industry players say the maturity of system integration is still the main consideration for commercialization.
Saturday 5 September 2026
TSMC's 3D packaging roadmap: engineering AI chips to think like the human brain
TSMC is steering the future of artificial intelligence toward high-density three-dimensional advanced packaging designed to mimic the architectural connectivity of the human brain, as traditional two-dimensional silicon scaling approaches its physical limits, a top TSMC executive said at SEMICON Taiwan 2026.