In the era of AI and high-performance computing (HPC), the once-separate worlds of chip design, packaging, and circuit boards are converging. According to the Global Electronics Association, AI server motherboards have become the largest, thickest, and most structurally complex PCBs ever manufactured, drawing substrate and PCB makers—which historically reacted to decisions made by chipmakers and packaging clients—into the heart of AI hardware development. This is background industry commentary with no price data, capacity change, or policy event; the source does not state the cause.
PCBsAI server motherboardssubstrateGlobal Electronics AssociationDigiTimes Asia
Taiwan wafer-testing supplier Hermes Testing Solutions Inc. (HTSI) is expanding its Taiwan operations. Its board approved budget authorisations on October 22 for a new R&D centre in Hsinchu and a manufacturing centre in south-central Taiwan, with total investment expected to exceed NT$7 billion (approx. US$215 million). This is a board-approved expansion plan; the source does not state the cause.
Iron Device, a fabless mixed-signal semiconductor company, disclosed in a regulatory filing on Oct. 23 that CEO Park Ki-tae purchased 125,000 shares of the company on the open market, equivalent to about 0.9% of its total outstanding shares. Park, the company's largest shareholder, increased his holdings to 2.8 million shares, raising his ownership stake to 20.01%. He said the current share price does not fully reflect the company's intrinsic value and future growth potential, prompting his open-market purchase. The share purchase is an actual, completed transaction. As background, the company has built a portfolio of power management ICs (power ICs) for next-generation compound power semiconductors and plans to use these products to expand into humanoid robots, next-generation mobility and AI data centers; it began mass production of its SMA6533 high-performance gate driver IC for gallium nitride (GaN) power transistors in the third quarter, and is supplying samples of driver IC chips for humanoid robot joint actuators to several global customers, with revenue contribution expected next year. Iron Device reported consolidated revenue of approximately 10.4 billion won in the first half of this year, surpassing its full-year 2025 revenue of 10.1 billion won, while its net loss for the period narrowed about 33% from a year earlier to 1.681 billion won.
Fabless semiconductor company Global Technology said at the second Auto Semicon Korea 2026 (ASK 2026), held at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Pangyo on Oct. 21, that it has begun its first mass production of automotive semiconductors in collaboration with Hyundai Mobis. The product entering mass production is the ID804 smart light-emitting diode (LED) multi-chip module (MCM) for automotive interior ambient lighting; the package integrates three red, green and blue (RGB) LED chips with a control chip and has been selected for use in Hyundai Motor and Kia vehicles. Hyundai Mobis provided the product specifications and validation requirements, while Global Technology designed the chip to meet those standards. CEO Kim Min-sun said the company established itself in the high-barrier automotive semiconductor market thanks to Hyundai Mobis' ASK ecosystem and active cooperation, and will expand its portfolio into power, communications and displays based on the first mass-produced product. The company established an evaluation framework based on AEC-Q100 and AEC-Q102-003 and incorporated ISO 26262 from the initial design stage. Based on the ID804, it is developing an integrated semiconductor handling power supply and signal communications as well as a next-generation CAN communication chip, and is jointly developing automotive display backlight driver chips with Hyundai Mobis; the two companies plan to cooperate in expanding into overseas markets.
automotive interior ambient lighting LED multi-chip modulepower supply and signal communications integrated semiconductor (in development)automotive CAN communication chip (in development)Global Technology, Hyundai Mobis and 4 totalThe Elec
Related manufacturers
Global Technology, Hyundai Mobis, Hyundai Motor, Kia
The 13th Criminal Division of the Seoul Southern District Court held the fourth hearing on Oct. 22 in the case against Fadu executives over alleged violations of the Capital Markets Act, with former CEO Lee Ji-hyo, current CEO Nam Yi-hyun and executive vice president Won Jong-taek attending as defendants. Prosecutors disclosed internal Microsoft Teams conversations from March 2023 — including 'If we can't go public, we'll have a funding hole' and 'So we'll just go under in July' — arguing Fadu pressed ahead with its IPO despite knowing revenue would plunge; Fadu went public in August 2023. Prosecutors also alleged Fadu used earlier order forecasts for its securities registration statement despite knowing major customers including SMART Modular, SpaceX and SK hynix had postponed or suspended orders for the second half of 2023, with Fadu having projected shipments of 3,200 SSDs for SpaceX satellite servers in Q4 2023. According to prosecutors, former CEO Lee Ji-hyo instructed staff on May 18, 2023 to 'assume no orders from SpaceX for now,' and the following day SpaceX informed Fadu there would be no additional POs before Q3 2024. EVP Won Jong-taek wrote in May 2023 that 'even if we lower the annual revenue target from 240 billion won to 150 billion won, actual results will likely be far lower.' Fadu's production plan from late May 2023 had removed H2 SpaceX orders, and contract manufacturer Quanta Storage demanded compensation for prolonged equipment downtime. The defense countered that the registration statement figures were conservative, worst-case estimates: Fadu included only about 50% of SMART Modular's anticipated order volume, excluded more than 30,000 additional units proposed by SMART Modular in late April 2023 and a 43,500-unit forecast from Hagiwara Solutions in May 2023; on the SpaceX suspension, the May 19 remark came from a SpaceX technical engineer rather than a purchasing official, and Lee Ji-hyo separately confirmed with SpaceX's sales organization the possibility of orders resuming within the year. Fadu resumed shipments toward the end of 2023, but supplied 2TB models for Falcon 9 rockets rather than the originally planned 8TB satellite models, with substantially smaller revenue contribution. Second witness Park Jong-hyun, head of Fadu's SoC business team, testified the sharp 2023 decline in SSD controller shipments for Meta stemmed from issues between SK hynix and Meta: SK hynix told Fadu in late 2022 it expected to supply about 900,000 controllers annually to Meta, but the forecast was abruptly cut to 350,000 units on Jan. 6 due to a dispute, and SK hynix discontinued the existing DRAM used in Meta SSDs and began redesigning. Fadu planned to cut the price of its third-generation SSD controllers from $43–$48 to around $30 to regain Meta's business, and included 434,000 controllers for Meta in its 2023 forecast — exceeding the 350,000-unit forecast — which appeared to contradict claims the estimates were conservative. Fadu ultimately failed to secure additional Meta orders through SK hynix; Meta switched its SSD supplier to SanDisk in 2024, and since 2024 Fadu has supplied SSD controllers to Meta through SanDisk.
SSD controllerssolid-state drives (SSDs)Fadu, SK hynix and 8 totalThe Elec
According to industry sources on Oct. 23, Dowoo Insys is developing ultra-thin glass (UTG) protective cover windows for rollable OLED displays used in automotive center information displays (CIDs) and entertainment screens, in cooperation with a major South Korean automotive electronics company. The product protects the OLED panel surface; rollable displays that extend and retract require flexible protective glass, for which plastic films have been used. Development is understood to be at an intermediate stage, with an industry source saying it is about halfway complete; in addition to the protective glass, the OLED panel and the extend-retract mechanism must also be developed, and the components must be integrated into a finished product after performance verification. If development proceeds as planned, commercialization could take place between the second half of 2027 and 2028; actual adoption in vehicles will depend on automakers' decisions. The company is also considering a separate equipment investment, since automotive rollable glass differs from smartphone UTG in size and processing requirements and requires dedicated equipment; Vietnam is among the potential production locations, while its second factory under construction in Vietnam is intended for smartphone UTG production and is separate from the proposed automotive investment. Background: Dowoo Insys began mass production of UTG for foldable smartphones in 2019, adopted in Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Z Fold series through Samsung Display, and in 2021 developed 14-inch S-shaped curved glass for automotive CIDs. Of the company's 85.7 billion won in revenue in the first half of 2026, UTG accounted for 82.6 billion won, or approximately 96%, with production and deliveries concentrated around new smartphone launches causing significant seasonal fluctuations. The company recently converted its exclusive supply agreement with Samsung Display into a three-year long-term agreement (LTA), and the automotive glass project is its first collaboration with another customer since the contract change. Automotive products are made in smaller volumes but can command relatively higher supply prices, particularly for premium vehicles, though development is technically demanding and adoption in production vehicles can take considerable time. The source does not state the cause.
ultra-thin glass (UTG) for automotive rollable OLED displaysDowoo InsysThe Elec
Gigavis disclosed on Oct. 23 that it will supply 46.9 billion won worth of substrate inspection equipment to the domestic facility of a South Korean semiconductor substrate manufacturer. The contract represents 89.51% of its revenue of approximately 52.4 billion won in 2025. The contract runs from Oct. 22 through Dec. 31, 2027; Gigavis will receive a 10% advance payment, with revenue recognized through a 70% interim payment and a 20% final payment. The customer was not disclosed. Background: one of Gigavis' major domestic customers is Samsung Electro-Mechanics, which recently announced plans to invest 4.27 trillion won at its Sejong facility to expand production capacity for FC-BGA substrates based on ABF (Ajinomoto Build-up Film). Securities analysts estimate Gigavis' annual revenue at approximately 98.3 billion won in 2026; its order backlog stood at around 182.1 billion won as of September; and disclosed orders accumulated in the second half of 2026 totaled 68.8 billion won, equivalent to approximately 90% of the 76.1 billion won recorded in the first half.
This is an interview with AJ Cooper, Co-Founder and CEO of Itera. Itera developed the first-of-its-kind 'fluid' circuit board, which uses liquid metal on glass substrates and electrowetting to rewire itself in real time, redrawing traces to match a new design in under a minute, aiming to compress the traditional PCB prototyping validation cycle (the source says it compresses a months-long process into days). Cooper holds a PhD in electrical engineering; his career included developing semiconductor equipment for GlobalFoundries, infrared night vision processes for FLIR, co-founding luxury smartwatch company Olio, and hardware roles at Uber and Lyft. Itera operates an electronics-as-a-service model with secure U.S.-based testing centers where customers get remote access to their 'Configurable Twin.' The source states that a top 5 global auto OEM and defense neoprimes have reserved Itera's production capacity, and that the company is talking with hyperscalers and chipset manufacturers; it also cites $50 billion spent annually on hardware development and validation. No specific component price movement, capacity cut or production halt is mentioned in the article.
Victor Lopez, Co-Founder and CTO of RaiderChip with over 20 years of experience in FPGA and ASIC design, gives an interview about the company. RaiderChip is a European fabless semiconductor company founded in 2024, developing a proprietary NPU architecture to bring Generative AI directly to edge devices; its business model combines chip development with licensing the NPU architecture as IP for integration into third-party SoCs. The technology targets Transformer inference, with strongest application areas in robotics, automotive, and industrial automation. The company is currently moving towards the tape-out of Kairós, its first-generation chip (a plan in progress, not yet completed); in the meantime it offers demonstrations on an FPGA-based NPU prototype that supports more than 50 models and is available for evaluation under a non-disclosure agreement. The company also presented a robotics demonstration: robots and their physics are simulated in MuJoCo, Google DeepMind's physics simulator, while the intelligence runs on real hardware, the Kairós FPGA-based NPU prototype; a speech recognition model transcribes instructions, a four-billion-parameter reasoning model interprets objectives and plans movements as a timed sequence of velocities, and all ten models, including speech recognition, reasoning, and robotic control policies, execute concurrently on a single NPU, locally and in real time, without any cloud connection. Lopez also cites customer concerns about technological sovereignty and strategic dependence on a small number of international suppliers of advanced technologies, noting recent geopolitical tensions and export restrictions on advanced hardware.
This is an interview with Lisa Spelman, CEO of Cornelis. She brings more than 20 years of experience across AI, cloud, enterprise infrastructure, data center operations, product strategy, and go-to-market leadership; before joining Cornelis she served as Corporate Vice President at Intel, where she led the Xeon Products and Solutions business within the Data Center & AI Group. At Cornelis she focuses on improving system utilization and reducing networking bottlenecks for AI infrastructure. The interview states: Cornelis is working on the third generation of its high-performance networking platform, with more than 50 OEM and ODM design wins; it is deployed in over 500 datacenters, including new large-scale deployments at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and the Texas Advanced Computing Center; and this month it announced the Active Compute Fabric, which adds programmable RISC-V cores at every hop across every NIC and switch to accelerate collectives, KV cache, and MoE routing, built on open standards (UALink and ESUN for scale-up, Ultra Ethernet for scale-out). The source does not state the cause; this is a background interview with no reported price, capacity, or supply-demand change.
According to Tom's Hardware, published 25 October 2026, AMD Director of Client Product Management Travis Kirsch told the Japanese publication MyNavi Tech+ that AMD CEO Lisa Su was one of the proponents of bringing back the Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor, which first debuted in April 2022. The relaunch was not a simple re-release: the company had to do extensive re-engineering and update its manufacturing process with TSMC to bring it back. The relaunch of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D coincided with the memory chip shortage, with the world suffering from extremely high DDR5 memory prices (DDR5 finally arrived in the middle of 2026), but Kirsch said 'this was planned before changes in the memory market occurred, not as a countermeasure to DDR5 shortages,' calling it 'the final gift to local users who have used our AM4 for nearly a decade, offering systems that use DDR4 the last change to upgrade their PCs.' Kirsch also said AMD is mostly focused on the premium, high-performance gaming market (AMD closed in on Intel at 48.4% CPU share in the October Steam Survey), while the affordable CPU market is no longer as big as it used to be as laptops have taken over that segment.
Texas Instruments (TI) held its latest earnings call this week, projecting fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of US$5.8 billion to US$6.3 billion. The midpoint of its guidance is broadly in line with third-quarter revenue, outperforming the seasonal declines typically seen in the fourth quarter. The company also indicated up to US$1,000 in chip content per humanoid robot, as analog supply tightens.
Magnate Technology expects rising aircraft engine demand and semiconductor equipment opportunities to support its growth while it expands production capacity. The aerospace components maker forecasts revenue of nearly NT$2 billion (US$61.5 million) in 2026 and expects 15% to 20% revenue growth in 2027. These figures are company forecasts/expectations, not achieved results.
An early per-clock comparison of AMD's Zen 6 has surfaced: leaker HXL spotted a Geekbench 7.1.0 listing for the 256-core EPYC 9996, the flagship "Venice" chip AMD launched in July, scoring 2,847 points in single-core on a Dell PowerEdge R9815 server running Linux. User three twenty six on X then locked a Ryzen 7 9700X to 4.1 GHz, matching the EPYC 9996's maximum boost, and got 2,444 points on the same Geekbench version, working out to roughly 16.5% higher single-core performance for Zen 6 at the same frequency. Zen 6 came out ahead in all 15 single-core subtests, with gains ranging from 8.2% in File Compression to 25.7% in HTML5 Browser. Caveats stated in the article: the EPYC 9996 uses the dense Zen 6c cores, not the full Zen 6 cores expected in desktop Ryzen chips; the two systems are wildly different (a server platform versus a 9700X running DDR5-6000 CL34 under CachyOS Linux); and the EPYC listing has since been pulled from the Geekbench database. AMD has confirmed that "Olympic Ridge" desktop CPUs will stay on AM5, though they reportedly won't arrive until 2027. The source does not state the cause.
Arm commented on the jury decision in its trial with Qualcomm. Arm's Ami Badani cited the $2 nominal damages award as validation. Meanwhile, chip design experts pointed to open architectures such as RISC-V as the long-term alternative for AI workload flexibility. The source does not state the legal cause of the verdict.
Delta is showcasing microgrid solutions for AI factories, high-performance computing (HPC) data centers, and smart manufacturing at Energy Taiwan 2026, held October 14 to 16 at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, Hall 1, 4F, Booth M0319a. Its prefabricated DC power system based on solid-state transformers (SSTs) uses a containerized architecture integrating SSTs, DC/DC converters, and control equipment, reduces the number of power conversion stages, and achieves SST energy efficiency of up to 98.5%; according to Delta, its implementation can improve grid-to-chip energy efficiency in AI data centers by 4–5%. The system can incorporate high-C-rate batteries to respond to rapid AI workload variations, providing millisecond-level power support, and its modular, prefabricated design can potentially shorten deployment time by up to 50%, with an architecture supporting future capacity expansion as computing demand increases. Delta is also presenting solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology for distributed power generation, with overall system efficiency of up to 85% when heat recovery is included; Delta plans to begin trial production of its SOFC solution by the end of 2026. The exhibition also includes EnergiQ, a digital energy management platform developed by Delta's ESG Consulting Office and built around the ISO 50001 methodology, plus expert presentations involving Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, and Delta's smart energy and microgrid teams.
XP Power has introduced the UCH750 series of 750W convection-cooled AC-DC power supplies for medical and industrial equipment requiring quiet operation, high efficiency, and reliable performance. The compact, chassis-mount, fanless design reduces acoustic noise and removes a wear-prone mechanical component, making the supplies suitable for noise-sensitive applications including medical imaging, patient monitoring, diagnostic instruments, treatment equipment, and home healthcare devices, as well as hospital equipment, factory automation, semiconductor manufacturing, test-and-measurement systems, and telecommunications infrastructure. The series achieves up to 96% conversion efficiency, and each unit measures 203.2 × 127.0 × 40.0 mm. It supports medical equipment requiring BF (Body Floating) applied-part classification, provides two Means of Patient Protection (2 × MOPP) of isolation between input and output, with a maximum patient leakage current of 100 µA under 264 VAC, 60 Hz conditions. The series reports to IEC 60601-1 and has UL and TÜV safety approvals, with Class I and Class II versions available; IEC 62368-1 safety approvals support IT and industrial integration, and the UCH750 meets EN 55032 Class B limits for conducted and radiated emissions. Five models provide nominal DC outputs of 12 V, 24 V, 36 V, 48 V, and 54 V from a universal 90–264 VAC input, delivering the full 750 W output from a 100 VAC input at ambient temperatures up to +50°C. Additional features include remote on/off control, a 5 VDC/2 A standby output, and built-in protection against overload, short circuit, overvoltage, and overtemperature. The series is available through Avnet Abacus, DigiKey, element14, Farnell, Mouser, RS, TME, authorized regional distributors, and directly from XP Power, with a three-year warranty. This is a product introduction announcement and does not constitute confirmed capacity or price changes.
UCH750 series 750W convection-cooled AC-DC power suppliesXP PowerPower Electronics News
In an interview at SEMICON West 2026, Soitec Chief Product Officer René Jonker discussed the company, which was spun out of CEA-Leti in 1992 around the Smart Cut process. Soitec now runs five main technology platforms: RF-SOI (used in RF switches and low-noise amplifiers in practically every 5G phone and Wi-Fi module), FD-SOI (used in automotive radar, IoT microcontrollers and edge devices, often cutting power by 30 to 50 percent without a node shrink), Power-SOI (high-voltage automotive and industrial circuits), POI (acoustic RF filters for 5G and 6G), and Photonics-SOI, developed a decade ago and now the platform carrying the company. Jonker said Photonics-SOI is 'now seen as the new gold'; as AI cluster connectivity pushes traffic from copper to fiber, it is driving Soitec's business 'with a very impressive growth rate' and underpins the co-packaged optics now coming into AI data centers. The article notes that Soitec trades on Euronext Paris and that an investor who put $100 into its stock in January 2026 was holding more than $600 by early October. On competition, Jonker said direct competition comes mostly from GlobalWafers, which 'has or used to have access to our IP,' while technology-level competition includes FD-SOI customers who could choose FinFET at TSMC, and a trade-off between silicon and indium phosphide for optical waveguides. SmartSiC (lowering the cost of SiC power devices for EV inverters) and RF-GaN on insulator (in development for 6G power amplifiers and aerospace) remain in development, and FD-SOI is moving to smaller geometries.
An analysis article published 23 October 2026 reports that export controls keep ASML's most advanced EUV lithography machines out of China, so the country's chip industry relies on DUV lithography with multiple patterning to make advanced chips, at the cost of bigger dies, more defects, lower yields, longer manufacturing times and higher bills. Chris Mack, co-founder and CTO of Fractilia, said industry conventional wisdom held that three exposures on a 193 immersion tool cost about the same as one exposure on an EUV tool, and that at four masks EUV became more cost-effective. Teardowns of Huawei's Mate 60 Pro in 2023 found its Kirin 9000S processor made by SMIC using a second-generation 7nm-class process without EUV; analysis of Huawei's Kirin 9030 found SMIC had pushed its DUV-based process closer to 5nm-class density, though it continued to lag TSMC and Samsung leading processes. A June Morgan Stanley report estimated Chinese DRAM maker CXMT was producing only around one-third as many bits per wafer as Western competitors, with the older process node accounting for only about a third of that shortfall, and said access to lithography is a 'hard ceiling' on Chinese memory development. Micron's 1-alpha generation was developed without EUV, showing how far DUV can be stretched; Micron's newer 1-gamma DRAM process uses EUV, which Micron said achieves more than 30% greater bit density per wafer than its preceding 1-beta generation. Morgan Stanley assumes CXMT remains stuck on its 1-alpha process without EUV, yet raises its share of global DRAM bit supply from 14% in 2026 to 16% in 2028 by building more greenfield capacity, and expects China's AI chip self-sufficiency to rise from 42% in 2025 to 70% by 2030. Mack said he would be hard pressed to believe a three-nanometer or two-nanometer node is economically viable without EUV.
DUV lithographyEUV lithographyDRAMASML, SMIC and 7 totalTom's Hardware
This is a technical overview (background) article discussing the roles of the FinFET structure and vertical GaN in high-power electronics (industrial, EVs, AI data centers); it contains no price or supply-demand movement. Key points: FinFETs are moving from logic to the power path, with foundries such as GlobalFoundries offering FinFET processes; Empower Semiconductor (now part of Analog Devices) developed its FinFast platform around ultra-fast FinFET-based power transistors; Claros (now part of Navitas) announced it will manufacture its integrated voltage regulators (IVRs) on Samsung Foundry's US-based 14-nm FinFET process. According to Empower, its Crescendo IVRs achieve roughly 20x faster transient response than conventional solutions; by paralleling up to 50 IVRs of roughly 60 A each, more than 3,000 A can be supplied to the load, with 2x lower voltage droop, which the company says yields an additional 15% reduction in xPU power for a typical AI workload. In May 2026, Analog Devices said it had entered a definitive agreement to buy Empower Semiconductor for $1.5 billion in cash, and the acquisition closed in July 2026. On vertical GaN: in 2024 Power Integrations acquired Odyssey Semiconductor's assets to develop vertical-conduction GaN FETs with 650 V and 1,200 V blocking voltages; onsemi introduced its proprietary GaN-on-GaN vertical architecture (vGaN), saying it reduces energy loss by almost 50%, manufactured at its fab in Syracuse, NY, acquired from NexGen Power Systems at the end of 2024; in October 2025, MIT spin-out Vertical Semiconductor raised an $11 million seed round led by Playground Global, demonstrated its vertical GaN process for 100 V to 1.2 kV device classes on 8-inch wafers, and hopes to have a fully integrated product out by the end of the year. The source does not state any cause related to price impact or market supply-demand.
FinFET-based power transistors (IVRs)vertical GaN power transistorsintegrated voltage regulators (IVRs)Analog Devices, Empower Semiconductor and 10 totalPower Electronics News
Related manufacturers
Analog Devices, Empower Semiconductor, Navitas, Samsung Foundry, GlobalFoundries, onsemi, Power Integrations, Odyssey Semiconductor Technologies, Vertical Semiconductor, NexGen Power Systems