Alphabet has signaled a transformative shift in its industrial strategy, unveiling a massive, sustained hardware build-out designed to break a persistent supply-side bottleneck.
Dr. Patrick Lo, Senior Fellow, Technology Development at GlobalFoundries (former Chief Technology Officer, AMF), outlined how photonic technologies are shaping the next phase of semiconductor innovation during a presentation at the third Asia Photonics Expo (APE 2026). His talk, titled "Integrated Photonics: A New Engine for Singapore's Semiconductor Innovation," focused on the role of optoelectronics in computing and communications.
Samsung Electronics is dismantling a key building at its Giheung campus as part of plans to construct a large-scale advanced research center, according to Hankyung. The site, known as SR5, is regarded as the birthplace of the company's semiconductor business and the location where Samsung developed its 65-megabit DRAM in 1992.
China is pushing ahead with its semiconductor materials strategy. Shanghai, one of the country's leading cities, has included brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and fourth-generation semiconductors among its priority future industries, signaling early preparation for a new materials era beyond third-generation semiconductors.
