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May 21, 08:13
TSMC's COUPE push puts Samsung's silicon photonics ambitions under pressure
Samsung Electronics has launched silicon photonics foundry services and entered pilot production, signaling during its latest earnings call that optical communication modules will soon move to mass production — backed by aggressive investment. Yet compared with TSMC, which has already achieved breakthroughs in co-packaged optics (CPO) through Taiwan's well-established supply chain ecosystem, Samsung still has a long way to go.
Nvidia's H200 was a major focus after the Trump-Xi meeting, but hopes for sales into China have faded after US President Donald Trump's latest remarks. Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping is firmly committed to developing domestic AI chips, leaving little room for common ground on the issue.
AMD said on May 21 that it plans to invest more than US$10 billion across Taiwan's semiconductor ecosystem to deepen strategic partnerships and expand advanced packaging capacity for next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The initiative aims to strengthen manufacturing capabilities, accelerate the deployment of AI systems, and support the growing demand for high-performance computing hardware.
Nvidia has unveiled a strategic expansion of its silicon portfolio, detailing a four-pronged commercial approach for its new Vera central processing unit. The chipmaker expects the processor to generate US$20 billion in standalone revenue, signaling a significant evolution in its hardware distribution strategy and a broader play for infrastructure dominance in the emerging agentic artificial intelligence market.
Nvidia has detailed a significant structural shift in its data center revenue reporting, introducing a new market segmentation that separates traditional hyperscale cloud providers from a rapidly expanding sector named ACIE, which stands for artificial intelligence clouds, industrial, and enterprise. While hyperscale platforms currently lead initial deployment, management projects that the ACIE segment will eventually outgrow them, owing to the massive scale of the global corporate economy.
GigaDevice said tight supply and rising prices across DRAM, NOR Flash, and SLC NAND Flash continued to fuel strong first-quarter 2026 earnings growth, supported by recovering demand from AI, server, and industrial applications.
India's first semiconductor mission brought fabs, OSAT units, and chip projects into the policy pipeline. Its second phase is being shaped around a harder question: whether India can fix the weak links that determine if those projects become a sustainable semiconductor ecosystem.
AI chip boom strains ABF substrate supply chain
May 21, 14:26
AI is shifting the semiconductor supply chain's next bottleneck from wafer fabrication and HBM memory to ABF substrates — a lower-profile but critical packaging material used in high-end CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, and networking chips.
Demand for power components is surging as AI servers adopt high-voltage direct current power delivery and advanced cooling technologies. This shift could increase component density and design complexity across the data center supply chain. Taiwanese power semiconductor makers are moving into cooling and power-management MOS technologies, as well as higher-spec upgrades.
Bloomberg reports that Texas Instruments (TI) has sued former vice president Kannan Soundarapandian, alleging he joined GlobalFoundries without fully disclosing his new employer and may bring proprietary power semiconductor knowledge into competitive use. TI is seeking to block his role, arguing it could expose confidential process "recipes, roadmaps, and know-how," with broader implications for competition in power device manufacturing and advanced process development.
LG Innotek has secured substrate supply terms with major technology customers that increasingly resemble long-term agreements used in the memory-chip sector, boosting the South Korean supplier's revenue visibility and reducing profit volatility, according to reports.Hankyung and Yonhap, citing a KB Securities report, said the proposed contracts include large upfront payments, binding multi-year supply commitments with penalty clauses, and equipment investment support from customers.
Tokyo Electron's Taiwan unit said on May 21 that it respected judicial proceedings and would not appeal following a ruling in a trade secrets case involving TSMC. The decision came after the Taiwan Intellectual Property and Commercial Court on April 27 convicted a former Tokyo Electron engineer for taking confidential TSMC materials and sentenced the individual to 10 years in prison, according to Reuters and Bloomberg.