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Friday 27 March 2026

Intel confirms CPU price rises amid supply constraints, raising global hardware costs

Intel has confirmed it has begun raising CPU prices for OEM customers in response to ongoing supply constraints and rising raw material costs. According to Nikkei Asia, both Intel and AMD have notified clients of planned price increases in March and April 2026. The report notes that AI-driven global memory shortages are pushing hardware costs higher and extending delivery times, placing unprecedented margin pressure on channel partners.

Friday 27 March 2026

Taiwan's ALi bets on custom chips for 2026 turnaround

At a series of year-end gatherings in Hsinchu and Taipei this week, Star Fusion and its affiliated companies outlined their business outlook for 2026, pointing to a shift toward higher-value chip design as a key growth driver.

Friday 27 March 2026

US advances chip tracking mandate after US$2.5B smuggling case exposes export gaps

In a rare show of bipartisan unity, a key US congressional committee voted 42-0 on Thursday to advance the Chip Security Act (CSA). The bill marks one of the most aggressive efforts yet to embed national security directly into the semiconductor supply chain, shifting export compliance from paperwork to hardware-level monitoring.

Friday 27 March 2026

Nvidia says quantum computing will not replace GPUs

Nvidia said quantum computing will complement rather than replace GPUs, even as Taiwan accelerates investment in quantum technology. Speaking at an industry event, the company said it does not expect any quantum technology to displace GPUs and instead sees future systems combining GPUs, QPUs, and CPUs to boost computing performance.

Thursday 26 March 2026

Semicon China 2026: Siemens EDA pushes agentic AI to cut chip design cycles in half

At the SEMICON China 2026 opening keynote, Siemens EDA IC Products Executive Vice President (EVP) Ankur Gupta delivered a clear message: traditional EDA software is no longer sufficient, and future chip design tools must be AI-driven.

Thursday 26 March 2026

Nuvoton and Tower agree on framework to restructure joint Japanese foundry operations

Nuvoton and Tower have agreed to restructure their joint Japanese operations, a move that could reallocate fabs and services and affect global semiconductor supply chains and customer relationships. The deal separates the partners' 12‑inch and 8‑inch businesses to sharpen strategic focus and ensure continuity across operations and customers worldwide.

Thursday 26 March 2026

SEMICON China opens with focus on AI chips and advanced packaging

SEMICON China 2026 opened on March 25 in Shanghai, as the global semiconductor industry enters a new expansion cycle fueled by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.

Thursday 26 March 2026

China's Naura and AMEC lead China's push into advanced chip packaging

As advanced packaging pushes toward 3D integration and high-bandwidth computing, hybrid bonding has emerged as a critical battleground for semiconductor equipment makers.

Thursday 26 March 2026

Nvidia and Emerald AI partner with utilities to build grid-responsive AI data centers

Nvidia and Emerald AI said on Tuesday that they are joining forces with a group of major US power producers — including AES Corporation, Constellation Energy, Invenergy, NextEra Energy, Nscale Energy & Power, and Vistra — to develop a new generation of "AI factories" designed to come online faster and operate as active participants in the power grid.

Thursday 26 March 2026

US senators accuse Nvidia CEO of misleading claims, urge halt to AI chip exports

US Senators Jim Banks and Elizabeth Warren, in a joint letter dated March 23, called on US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to suspend Nvidia's export licenses for advanced AI chips destined for China and intermediary Southeast Asian countries, including Singapore and Vietnam.

Thursday 26 March 2026

Four reasons that Aspeed dominates the BMC chip market

As Taiwan-based IC design firms face declining global market share due to China, Taiwan's Aspeed stands out by dominating the baseboard management controller (BMC) chip sector.

Thursday 26 March 2026

Broadcom to mass-produce 400G single-lane PAM4 DSP by 2027, vows to maintain lead

Broadcom recently announced that it completed development of a 400G single-lane PAM4 digital signal processor (DSP) at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) 2026, signaling accelerated progress toward higher-speed optical links, with implications for global data center scalability, AI deployments, and supply-chain dynamics as the industry awaits volume production and wider market adoption over the coming years.

Wednesday 25 March 2026

With Hua Hong partnership, STMicro builds 'China for China' supply chain

STMicroelectronics said this week that its STM32 microcontrollers, produced in partnership with Hua Hong Semiconductor, have entered volume production in China and are now being shipped to local customers, marking a significant step in the company's "China for China" strategy.

Wednesday 25 March 2026

Tescan targets Taiwan and South Korea for semiconductor investment

Czech microscopy equipment supplier Tescan is continuing to deepen its presence in the Asia-Pacific market, targeting growing opportunities in semiconductor failure analysis (FA). In an interview in Seoul, CFO Pavel Sustek and Asia-Pacific president Sean Lee outlined the company's localized investment strategy across the region.

Wednesday 25 March 2026

Taiwan chipmakers chase drone imaging edge with thermal and AI

Non-China supply chains in the drone sector are emerging as a new battleground for global technology vendors, with Taiwan's chipmakers increasingly expanding into the space. Among the various segments, imaging-related technologies have drawn the most intense competition.

Wednesday 25 March 2026

Arm defends shift into chips as AGI CPU targets agentic AI demand

Arm unveiled its first "Arm AGI CPU" on March 24 at its Arm Everywhere event, marking a major shift in its business model. The chip, conceived three years ago and now ready for mass production, breaks from Arm's decades-long role as an IP supplier and signals its entry into the design and delivery of its own silicon products.

Wednesday 25 March 2026

Analysis: Qualcomm restructures Asia operations, giving Taiwan greater strategic weight

At a spring banquet in Taiwan, Qualcomm used the occasion not only to recap highlights from its recent appearances at major industry exhibitions, but also to underscore the growing importance of 6G standards in an AI-driven era. More consequentially, ST Liew—Vice President of Qualcomm Technologies and President for Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and Australia/New Zealand—announced a structural shift: Qualcomm's Taiwan operations will be elevated into a standalone region, reporting directly to the APAC president, on par with markets such as Japan and South Korea.

Wednesday 25 March 2026

Agentic AI shift puts CPUs at the core as Arm rolls out first chip

Arm has officially launched the Arm AGI CPU, a new class of mass-production-ready processor built on its Neoverse platform and designed to power next-generation AI infrastructure. Mohamed Awad, executive vice president of Arm's cloud AI business, also outlined the company's latest strategic roadmap alongside the announcement.

Wednesday 25 March 2026

Global semiconductor market rebounds in 2025 with AI-led expansion

According to Omdia, the global semiconductor market reached approximately US$830.8 billion in 2025, a 23.3% year-over-year increase and the second consecutive year of growth above 20%. This follows a downturn in 2023 and reflects a strong AI-driven recovery. The data processing segment, led by companies such as Nvidia, recorded the fastest expansion, while all major end markets — including automotive, industrial, and consumer — returned to growth, pointing to a broad-based recovery rather than the uneven rebound seen in 2024.

Tuesday 24 March 2026

China's AI GPUs face equipment and software constraints, but system-level design boosts self-reliance

Although it may appear that China's AI GPU development is behind the US by one or more generations, a recent Morgan Stanley report reveals the actual gap is smaller than widely perceived.

Tuesday 24 March 2026

Alibaba unveils XuanTie C950 and C925, advancing RISC-V into AI and edge computing

Alibaba's DAMO Academy has introduced two new RISC-V processors—the flagship XuanTie C950 and the energy-efficient C925—marking a significant step in pushing the open-source architecture into both high-performance AI and edge applications.

Tuesday 24 March 2026

Trump administration's 'Pax Silica' fund to strengthen global semiconductor and AI supply chains

The Trump administration set up a US$250 million fund intended to grow out of its "Pax Silica" initiative launched in December 2025, aimed at supporting global supply chains for semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), and critical minerals, according to the New York Times. The fund represents the first step in a voluntary consortium that could attract up to US$1 trillion in investments from allies, including Singapore, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Britain, and Australia, with the US committing US$250 million.

Tuesday 24 March 2026

Nvidia opens server racks to rival chips, expanding cloud infrastructure role

Nvidia is expanding its role in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure by designing server racks that can accommodate processors from its competitors, according to a report by The Information, citing people familiar with the matter.

Tuesday 24 March 2026

Huawei's Ascend 950PR debuts with nearly 3x H20 performance, targets China's AI compute gap

Huawei has officially launched its Ascend 950PR processor and introduced the Atlas 350 AI accelerator card equipped with this chip, marking the commercial debut of its next-generation inference computing platform. At Huawei China Partner Conference 2026, the company showcased the Ascend 950PR AI chip, highlighting that a single Atlas 350 card delivers up to 2.87x the compute power of Nvidia's H20, emphasizing its FP4 low-precision inference capabilities, a rare feature among AI accelerators in the Chinese market.

Tuesday 24 March 2026

Zeiss deepens Taiwan investment, taps new semiconductor lead as GM

Zeiss is significantly intensifying its investment in Taiwan, positioning the island as a premier global hub for its optical and semiconductor technologies. This strategic shift, marked by the appointment of Henry Cai as the new General Manager of Zeiss Taiwan, signals a move beyond product distribution toward deep-tier research and development collaboration.

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