Sandisk says its NAND-based High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) technology can match HBM bandwidth while providing eight to 16 times the capacity at a similar cost, positioning flash memory closer to processors as inference workloads strain conventional memory systems.

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.

At a shared stage at Semicon Taiwan 2026, executives from Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron agreed that traditional 2.5D high-bandwidth memory (HBM) using interposers is approaching a performance ceiling. Consequently, the industry is transitioning toward 3D vertical stacking architectures to minimize transmission power consumption and leverage wafer-level bonding technologies.

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.

Cable manufacturer Wonderful Hi-Tech announced its financial results for the second quarter and first half of 2026 during an earnings call held on September 1. A ramp-up in high-speed transmission cable shipments for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, coupled with strong pull-in momentum from a major US low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite customer, drove second-quarter results. The company also said it is expanding capacity in Thailand and Vietnam to capture new opportunities in space data centers and physical AI.

China-led experts have released what CCTV described as the world's first international standard for legged robots, creating a common framework for evaluating humanoid robots, robot dogs and other machines designed to walk, run, climb slopes and cross obstacles.

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.

As Semicon Taiwan 2026 gets underway, semiconductor test-interface structural parts maker Certain Micro Application Technology (CMAT) announced three core product lines aimed at rising AI and high-performance computing (HPC) chip testing demand: fine drilling for upper and lower guide plates, probe card structural components, and ATE Stiffener test frames.

As artificial intelligence demand drives astronomical growth in advanced chip manufacturing, the semiconductor industry is hitting critical resource bottlenecks. Speaking at SEMICON Taiwan 2026, leaders from Ecolab and Edwards Vacuum warned on September 2 that continuing with current water and energy practices is unsustainable.

Elon Musk has restructured the SpaceX leadership team tasked with constructing the company's AI data centers, replacing several leaders with executives drawn from SpaceX's rocket and satellite internet divisions. The reshuffle follows mounting civil engineering concerns and persistent operational reliability issues at existing data center facilities in Tennessee and Mississippi. During its initial push to establish AI infrastructure rapidly, the company operated clusters for extended periods without backup cooling or power systems, significantly elevating the risk of system outages, sources told The Information.

Manus has resumed independent operations under its founding team, closing a turbulent chapter that began with Meta Platforms' multibillion-dollar acquisition of the AI agent startup and ended after Chinese regulators ordered the transaction canceled.

GoPro's planned US$285 million merger with Starman Optical could give the struggling action-camera maker a path to recapitalize its balance sheet and expand into optical transceivers, AI infrastructure, defense, robotics, and aerospace. The deal would repay GoPro's roughly US$92 million in debt while leaving existing shareholders with about 10% of the combined company, potentially marking a major shift in GoPro's business beyond consumer cameras.

Anthropic has released Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1, betting that cheaper agentic-AI economics and early scientific-research results will differentiate its latest models more than raw benchmark gains alone. The two are the same underlying model at different safeguard levels: Fable 5.1 is generally available now on Anthropic's platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure under the API identifier claude-fable-5-1, while Mythos 5.1 is limited to vetted organizations working in cybersecurity and the life sciences, according to Anthropic's announcement.

Dell Technologies' quarterly results showed record AI server orders and backlog, but executives used the earnings call's question-and-answer session on September 1 to disclose a more detailed point not in the headline numbers: the pace at which enterprise customers, rather than just large cloud and sovereign buyers, are adopting its AI infrastructure.

Dell Technologies closed its fiscal second quarter with revenue of US$47.0 billion, up 58% year over year, but the more telling number is what happened below the top line: operating income more than tripled, and the operating margin nearly doubled to 11.5% from 6.0% a year earlier. AI infrastructure did not just add revenue this quarter — it pulled the entire company's profitability up with it.

Apple has unveiled new Mac mini and Mac Studio models, equipped respectively with its first 2-nanometer chip, the M6, and the four-die M5 Ultra. Most notably, the latest 2-nanometer process is used only in the entry-level Mac mini, while the 3-nanometer M5 Ultra is officially billed as the "most powerful M-series chip yet."

Qisda has been expanding its display, commercial, and industrial businesses beyond traditional desktop monitors into medical, rugged, automotive, unmanned vehicle, drone, and low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite applications. Its Commercial and Industrial Group (CIG) has now made physical AI a core priority. CIG aims to extend Qisda's products from underwater, across land, and into the sky and outer space, building a full physical AI ecosystem.

Gudeng Precision Industrial chairman Bill Chiu said on August 31 that the company has begun building out its global manufacturing footprint. Its Japan plant is expected to complete further expansion in the second half of 2027 and gradually enter mass production, while the company has begun using an existing leased facility in the US for basic processing and manufacturing preparations.

Taiwan's limited land and heavy dependence on imported energy have made power a scarce and strategic resource in the compute era, putting AI data center (AIDC) site selection on the radar of industry and government. Taoyuan's Department of Economic Development chief Chang Cheng said on August 31 that the city is positioning itself as a northern AIDC demonstration base, with Tatan Power Plant and CPC Corp.'s Third Liquefied Natural Gas Receiving Terminal serving as key advantages.

AI's early-stage growth is creating a short-term squeeze on land, talent, capital, and power in Taiwan, but there is no such thing as a world that cannot do without Taiwan, ASE Technology CEO and SEMI Global Board Executive Committee Chair Tien Wu said. He made the remarks at a pre-show conference on August 31 ahead of SEMICON Taiwan 2026, which runs from September 2 to 4.

Speaking at the Silicon Photonics Global Summit ahead of Semicon Taiwan 2026, Marvell Technology CTO Radha Nagarajan highlighted that the core focus for upgrading connectivity in the AI data center era has shifted firmly to power consumption. He noted that the acceleration of co-packaged optics (CPO) adoption is primarily driven by two critical bottlenecks: power and unit density.

TIME unveiled its 2026 TIME100 AI list on August 27 with a notable change in its China lineup. DeepSeek founder Wenfeng Liang, named among the "Leaders" in 2025, disappeared from this year's list, while Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) co-CEO Mong-song Liang made a rare appearance.

As AI packages grow larger, the next substrate battleground is rapidly extending from traditional organic materials to glass. Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEMCO) will make its first appearance at Semicon Taiwan 2026, with advanced packaging and glass substrate expert Gang Duan traveling to Taiwan to unveil the company's roadmap for next-generation advanced packaging substrates aimed at AI infrastructure.

DIGITIMES observed that as AI systems continued to scale, interconnect requirements inside AI data centers had expanded from chips, packages, and boards to racks, clusters, and eventually inter-data-center connections.

Chinese large-model developer Z.ai says it can now support large-scale inference using roughly 100,000 domestically produced AI chips, while its GLM models are also moving closer to overseas cloud deployment.