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Thursday 27 August 2026
Kioxia weighs third Kitakami fab as NAND demand rises
Kioxia Holdings is weighing construction of a new manufacturing building at its Kitakami plant in northern Japan, as rising NAND demand pushes the memory maker toward its next phase of capacity expansion beyond 2029.
Thursday 27 August 2026
SK Hynix questions PIM as thermal, packaging limits constrain HBM
South Korean memory rivals Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are taking fundamentally different routes to solve HBM performance bottlenecks. While Samsung frames processing-in-memory (PIM) as its core solution, SK Hynix is prioritizing packaging interconnect innovation to streamline data movement.
Thursday 27 August 2026
CXMT DDR5 closes in on SK Hynix at 8,000 MT/s, benchmark gap falls below 1%
CXMT is narrowing the performance gap with SK Hynix in high-speed DDR5 memory, with new benchmark tests showing CXMT chips running stably at 8,000 MT/s and delivering productivity and gaming performance within about 1% of SK Hynix's latest M-die.
Thursday 27 August 2026
CXMT lands early LPDDR6 opportunity with Xiaomi Xring O3, eyes China flagship phones
China's smartphone and memory supply chains are moving closer together, with Xiaomi's new Xring O3 processor potentially providing CXMT with an early commercial entry into the LPDDR6 era.
Thursday 27 August 2026
Moody's lifts South Korea GDP forecast on hard-to-replace memory chips
Moody's has sharply raised its forecast for South Korea's 2026 economic growth to 3.5%, saying the country's semiconductor boom and export strength will last longer than expected and that its high-end memory supply remains difficult to replace.
Thursday 27 August 2026
Nvidia reportedly shifts HBM4 mix toward 8-high as memory supply stays tight

Nvidia has reportedly asked Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to increase the share of 8-high products in their HBM4 supply mix, as the chipmaker seeks greater flexibility in balancing thermal constraints, packaging yields and memory availability amid tight supply.

Wednesday 26 August 2026
YMTC targets global NAND lead by 2027 as parent seeks US$5 billion IPO
Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) is aiming to become the world's largest NAND flash supplier by the end of 2027, setting an aggressive target as its parent prepares a nearly US$5 billion Shanghai listing to fund production upgrades and research.
Wednesday 26 August 2026
Hot Chips 2026: Samsung advances LPDDR5X-PIM as HBM costs mount
At Hot Chips 2026, Samsung Electronics moved processing-in-memory (PIM) closer to practical deployment, presenting what it described as the industry's first LPDDR-based PIM device for AI inference alongside working silicon, performance data and a design intended to minimize changes to existing memory systems.
Wednesday 26 August 2026
SK hynix production union rejects stock-heavy pay deal by 25 votes
SK hynix's production-worker union has rejected the company's tentative 2026 wage and collective bargaining agreement by just 25 votes, sending the two sides back to the negotiating table as production workers push back against a proposed shift from cash-heavy profit sharing toward stock-based compensation.
Wednesday 26 August 2026
Trump weighs Apple China chip deal as CXMT runs full
Apple is seeking to diversify its supply chain to ease pressure from rising memory costs and has reportedly sought US government clearance to buy memory from blacklisted Chinese chipmaker CXMT. The request has quickly become entangled in US-China geopolitics, but even if it receives political approval, CXMT’s long-running capacity constraints could still keep Apple from getting what it wants.
Wednesday 26 August 2026
Apple is only the test: Chinese memory makers CXMT, YMTC target North American cloud market
The memory industry is entering a powerful growth cycle, with Apple seeking to add Chinese suppliers CXMT and YMTC to its memory supply chain. With a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping expected on September 24, 2026, sources say Washington, previously opposed to such sourcing, could allow the purchases to proceed.
Wednesday 26 August 2026
Samsung, Intel widen AI chip battle into memory, packaging
Samsung Electronics and Intel are pushing into each other's core businesses as AI semiconductor competition shifts from individual chips to full-system integration. South Korean reports cited by Counterpoint Research said Samsung is using high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to strengthen its foundry business, while Intel is expanding from logic chips and foundry services into memory through advanced packaging and system-level technologies.
Wednesday 26 August 2026
SK hynix adds second major customer as Nvidia misses Samsung's top five
SK hynix added a second customer accounting for more than 10% of revenue in the first half of 2026, while Nvidia remained outside Samsung Electronics' five largest customers, highlighting the contrast in how the two Korean memory makers are exposed to the AI accelerator leader.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
Nvidia and SK Hynix CPO strategies diverge as 3D optics look toward a post-2030 horizon
On August 20, SK Hynix's global research team published a paper in Nature Electronics detailing its co-packaged optics (CPO) development for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI. Highlighting key technical hurdles and outlining the trajectory for next-generation optical interconnect technology, the paper marks SK Hynix's first systematic presentation of its CPO roadmap.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
US voices first complaint over South Korea's KRW800 trillion chip cluster as investment pressure mounts
The US has informally expressed dissatisfaction with the South Korean government's KRW800 trillion (US$578.5 billion) plan to build a semiconductor cluster in the country's southwest. The complaint comes as Washington escalates its demands for South Korean investment on American soil, and reflects frustration that Seoul is throwing its weight behind domestic chip projects while moving slowly on commitments in the US.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
China-based Guangyu Xinchen says 3D-stacked edge AI chip has entered mass-production deployment
According to 36Kr, Shanghai Guangyu Xinchen Technology says its TC1000 series of 3D-stacked near-memory-computing AI processors has moved from silicon validation to mass-production deployment, marking a claimed acceleration in the commercialization of memory-centric computing for edge AI.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
Commentary: Nvidia's 15% hike piles pressure on the AI supply chain, lifts ASIC prospects
Nvidia has reportedly notified major customers that server systems using its AI chips will rise by more than 15%, with the new pricing set to apply to models shipping from early 2027, including Grace Blackwell and the next-generation Vera Rubin platform. The move is expected to ripple through the chip and system supply chain, while industry figures say it could also lift the appeal of inference ASICs.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
Samsung, SK Hynix step up China NAND upgrades as US tool risks grow

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are stepping up equipment spending at their NAND flash plants in China through 2027, upgrading existing production lines even as future access to Western chipmaking tools becomes less predictable.

Tuesday 25 August 2026
AI infrastructure boom drives Taiwan export orders, exposing power bottleneck, net-zero tech needs

Global artificial intelligence infrastructure buildouts and rising capex by cloud service providers pushed Taiwan's July export orders for information and communications technology (ICT) products, led by AI servers, up nearly 90% year-over-year, while export orders for foundry and memory also rose by more than 70%. However, companies in advanced economies are encountering power shortages as they invest in AI infrastructure, exposing a bottleneck that highlights the need to develop AI computing and net-zero technologies in tandem.

Tuesday 25 August 2026
SK Hynix and Alibaba tackle the next AI bottleneck: getting more value per chip
The AI infrastructure race has been marked by a near-fixated drive to expand AI-powered buildouts, as demand for increasingly complex chip configurations pushes against the physical and economic limits of scalability.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
Samsung pushes HBM toward logic, SK Hynix targets packaging at Hot Chips 2026
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix outlined different areas of emphasis for overcoming the next high-bandwidth memory (HBM) bottleneck at Hot Chips 2026, with Samsung pushing more logic and customer-specific functions into the HBM base die while SK Hynix focuses on packaging, heat and the challenges of taller memory stacks.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
Nvidia memory demand widens the gap between SK Hynix and Samsung

Nvidia's AI memory orders helped drive a sharp split between SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics in the first half of 2026. According to Chosun Biz, Nvidia became SK Hynix's biggest customer in the first half of 2026, while it did not rank among Samsung's top five revenue sources.

Monday 24 August 2026
Etron chair sees memory boom extending to 2028-2030
The memory industry is undergoing a structural shift as AI demand surges, and Etron Technology chairman Nicky Lu said the sector's boom will stretch beyond 2027, with shortages likely lasting through 2028 and possibly into 2030. He said supply is tightening further as AI and edge computing create rigid demand, pushing the supply chain to focus on higher-value applications.
Monday 24 August 2026
Samsung's DRAM capacity lead shrinks as SK Hynix expands faster

Samsung Electronics' DRAM wafer capacity will grow only marginally through 2027, with investment directed at node migration and line conversions rather than aggressive wafer-capacity expansion, according to Omdia data obtained by Chosun Biz.

Monday 24 August 2026
SK Hynix charts advanced HBM packaging path: hybrid bonding, Intel EMIB and 3D integration
Competition in high bandwidth memory (HBM) is shifting from raw memory performance to advanced packaging. As bandwidth, capacity and stack heights keep climbing, thermal management, power consumption and packaging have emerged as the new bottlenecks. At Hot Chips 2026, SK Hynix laid out its advanced packaging roadmap in detail, moving from hybrid bonding to Intel's EMIB and ultimately toward 3D integration.