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Sep 15
TSMC 3nm, 2nm, and CoWoS stay tight as AWS, MediaTek, TPU shift capacity
TSMC's 3nm, 2nm, and CoWoS advanced packaging capacity remained in short supply in late 2026's third quarter, as changes in major customer orders and front-end and back-end supply models prompted the foundry to adjust its advanced capacity allocation. Supply chain sources said Nvidia and Apple continue to dominate TSMC's advanced process and packaging resources, while AWS has recently expanded AI chip tape-outs, giving Annapurna more 3nm capacity.

SK Hynix's production workers' union has approved a revised pay agreement that raises the cash share of employee profit-sharing bonuses, ending weeks of uncertainty after members rejected the previous proposal by just 25 votes.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) chairman C.C. Wei and co-chief operating officer (co-COO) Y.J. Mii participated in the "Cross-Generational Dialogue: Questions and Answers for the AI Era" forum on September 15.
SK Hynix is in talks with Intel about a potential deal that could give the South Korean company its first memory chip manufacturing operation in the US, as tight supply pushes customers and governments to secure more domestic capacity.

As AI servers drive demand for higher-speed optical interconnects and co-packaged optics (CPO) moves toward volume production, silicon photonics testing is shifting from component-performance verification toward wafer-yield protection and earlier risk screening.

Global cloud service providers are continuing to expand AI infrastructure, driving a surge in demand for high-frequency, high-speed PCBs and making copper-clad laminate (CCL) upgrades increasingly critical to system performance. With both PCB layer counts and material specifications rising, Taiwan suppliers including Elite Material (EMC), Taiwan Union Technology (TUC), Iteq, Nan Ya Plastics, and Ventec are expected to sustain strong shipments through the second half of 2026.

AI, high-performance computing, and advanced packaging are accelerating demand for glass substrates, but smaller through-glass vias are making conventional filling methods harder to use. Geckos is promoting a copper paste process with vacuum printing as an alternative that could improve yield, lower costs, and support denser interconnects.

Samsung Electronics' in-house Exynos application processors (APs) are steadily regaining lost ground in the global smartphone market. Samsung's share of the global smartphone AP market rose to 9% in the second quarter of 2026, up 2 percentage points from the previous quarter and 3 percentage points from a year earlier, marking a second straight quarterly increase.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly testing Micron's most advanced 1γ LPDDR5X memory for possible use in the Galaxy S27 series, as rising costs around next-generation mobile DRAM complicate supply decisions. South Korean media say higher prices for advanced-process chips, plus the prospect of further mobile DRAM increases in the fourth quarter of 2026, are weighing on Samsung's plans.
Apple's acceptance of sharply higher Samsung Electronics memory prices for early 2027 is putting a number on the cost of the AI boom for smartphones. The reported agreement comes just days after Apple limited the iPhone 18 Pro price increase to US$100, highlighting its willingness to absorb part of a historic rise in memory costs to defend shipments and market position.

Micron has demonstrated what it calls the world's first 512GB DDR5 registered dual in-line memory module (RDIMM) across multiple server platforms, doubling the capacity of the 256GB RDIMM it began sampling in May as next-generation systems demand greater memory capacity and bandwidth.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly handing the growth in its commodity memory module business to outside assemblers in Vietnam, India, and the Philippines, a sign of how completely high-bandwidth memory (HBM) has taken over its own packaging space. The shift keeps Samsung's scarce back-end capacity focused on its most profitable products and pushes the geography of its conventional memory supply increasingly outside South Korea.