Asus' 2026 notebook shipments are expected to remain broadly flat or decline 1.3% from 2025 (a forecast, not an actual result), as the global notebook market faces steep cost increases for key components including memory and processors. According to the notebook supply chain, commercial notebooks and Chromebooks are expected to grow 27% and 9% respectively, offsetting declines in consumer and gaming notebooks and keeping Asus' annual shipments relatively stable.
memoryprocessorscommercial notebooksAsusDigiTimes Asia
Samsung Electronics' latest results show AI infrastructure demand increasingly determining the group's earnings, with soaring semiconductor profit offsetting continued losses in its consumer-device division. The company said a sharp expansion in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) sales and rising memory prices drove another record quarter, while its outlook pointed to supply pressure further as customers expand AI investment.
high-bandwidth memory (HBM)Samsung ElectronicsDigiTimes Asia
On Oct. 29, 2026, Samsung Electronics reported results for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, 2026: consolidated revenue of KRW 195.3 trillion, an all-time quarterly high, up 14% QoQ, and operating profit of KRW 107.4 trillion, making it the world's first tech company to exceed KRW 100 trillion in quarterly operating profit. The DS Division posted revenue of KRW 147.1 trillion and operating profit of KRW 106.5 trillion, with QoQ sales up 15%; the Memory Business set an all-time high for quarterly revenue and operating profit, managing its product mix toward AI products amid capacity constraints, with strong server demand leading to higher market prices across all applications, and significantly scaled up HBM4 sales. The DX Division posted QoQ revenue growth of 8% and an operating loss of KRW 0.8 trillion. MX and Networks posted combined revenue of KRW 37.7 trillion with an operating loss of KRW 0.6 trillion; SDC posted revenue of KRW 8.0 trillion and operating profit of KRW 1.1 trillion; VD/DA posted combined revenue of KRW 13.9 trillion with an operating loss of KRW 0.2 trillion. Q3 capital expenditure was KRW 29 trillion, up KRW 12.2 trillion QoQ and KRW 19.8 trillion YoY; the January-September cumulative total was KRW 56.9 trillion, up KRW 24.7 trillion YoY; full-year 2026 capex is expected at approximately KRW 84.4 trillion (KRW 76.8 trillion for DS, KRW 3.9 trillion for SDC) — an expectation, not an achieved result. The company projects that in Q4 2026 memory demand growth will revolve around new CPU and GPU platform-related products and surging QLC SSD demand, and that in 2027 AI-driven demand will far exceed industry supply compared with 2026; these are forward-looking outlooks.
ASM International's stronger outlook suggests that investment in advanced chipmaking is accelerating demand for its deposition equipment faster than the company had previously planned. The source does not state the cause. Its next challenge is to secure enough components to support that expansion as customers move toward more complex logic and memory manufacturing.
deposition equipmentASM InternationalDigiTimes Asia
This is a background technology column published on October 29, 2026 (authored by Professor Younghyun Kim of Hanyang University ERICA), explaining — not reporting — industry developments; it contains no price, capacity or policy event. The article states that AI data center bottlenecks have shifted from GPU compute speed to data movement: copper interconnects suffer signal loss, heat and repeater power overhead at high speeds and longer distances, so networks are shifting to silicon-photonics-based optical interconnects; co-packaged optics (CPO) places optical engines next to the switch ASIC to shorten electrical paths, increase bandwidth density and save power. It cites Meta's evaluation of a CPO switch system presented at ECOC 2025, in which power consumption in the optical interconnect portion was approximately 65% lower than a comparable pluggable architecture, with connection stability confirmed under the specific test conditions; companies such as NVIDIA and Broadcom are accelerating commercialization by introducing network products incorporating CPO technology. The article also describes LPO (removable modules with the DSP eliminated) and NPO (optical engines close to but outside the switch package) as alternative approaches, explains that HBM and CPO reduce GPU data-wait time at the memory and network levels respectively, and notes remaining CPO challenges including laser light supply, fiber connection, heat from ASICs, and yield improvement.
co-packaged optics (CPO)silicon photonicsHBMNVIDIA, Broadcom and 3 totalSK Hynix Newsroom
In a technical explainer, Samsung states that zHBM, currently under development, is a next-generation AI memory architecture designed around AI inference, reasoning, long-context processing and agentic AI workloads that place greater demands on memory through more generated tokens and larger KV caches. Moving beyond conventional HBM architectures in which memory sits beside the AI chip, zHBM directly stacks memory on the processor. The article says zHBM uses direct 3D integration and a Distributed I/O architecture to create shorter, denser connections intended to deliver high bandwidth with greater energy efficiency; core technologies include Wafer-on-Wafer (WoW) stacking combined with Hybrid Copper Bonding (HCB) for direct copper-to-copper connections at fine pitches, and reduced size and pitch of Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) for higher interconnect density, with shorter interconnects lowering data-transfer energy. The article notes that direct stacking creates new thermal challenges, as heat generated by the processor may need to pass through the memory stack, and that Samsung is exploring stack-height optimization; it emphasizes co-design and co-optimization of memory with the AI chip from early development stages and aims to work with customers and ecosystem partners on zHBM solutions tailored to their AI chips' performance, power, thermal and architectural requirements. The article is informational only, with no specific timeline, capacity or pricing figures and no statement of market supply-demand conditions.
KLA's latest results suggest that the expansion of AI chip manufacturing is increasing demand for inspection and measurement equipment, with its ability to deliver complex systems becoming a central constraint on growth. A stronger outlook for the December quarter points to continued momentum, while optical-component availability and higher memory costs complicate the expansion.
inspection and measurement equipmentoptical componentsmemoryKLADigiTimes Asia
Asus expects commercial PC prices in Taiwan to rise nearly 10% in the second half of 2026, after surging almost 30% in the first half of 2026, because higher memory and processor costs continue to pressure the PC supply chain. The company also forecasts that enterprise PC demand, AI edge-computing applications, and replacement cycles will drive simultaneous growth in commercial PC volumes and prices in 2027. These figures are Asus's expectations/forecasts, not achieved results.
commercial PCmemoryprocessorAsusDigiTimes AsiaPrice Movement
Tesla and SpaceX are building Terafab in Texas, with Musk aiming to establish a facility capable of processing 1 million wafers per month within 10 years. Intel has joined as a technology partner, and TSMC has confirmed discussions on potential cooperation. Procurement officials from Tesla and SpaceX visited Korean suppliers at SEMICON West. Whether Terafab will materialize as planned remains uncertain.
On Oct. 28, SK hynix reported consolidated revenue of 104.62 trillion won for the third quarter of this year, exceeding 100 trillion won in quarterly revenue for the first time, with operating profit of 83.33 trillion won; the figures represented year-on-year increases of 327.9% and 632.1% respectively, and quarter-on-quarter increases of 31.9% and 37.6%, both slightly exceeding market consensus estimates. Operating margin reached 79.7%, up 3.5 percentage points from the previous quarter; net profit totaled 39.78 trillion won, up 215.7% from a year earlier but down 57.7% from the preceding quarter. The company attributed its DRAM performance to increased shipments of fourth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) and expanded sales of DDR5 memory for servers; the NAND business grew on increased sales of 321-layer enterprise SSDs (eSSDs) and greater focus on high-value-added data center products. SK hynix expanded long-term supply agreements (LTAs) securing contracts covering more than 50% of its total production capacity for both 2027 and 2028, has signed LTAs with 14 major customers including large global cloud service providers (CSPs), and is discussing extending contract durations beyond the typical five-year term. The company expects the memory supply shortage to persist through 2030, citing increasing technical complexity in advanced processes and the time required to build new facilities as sustaining a market structure in which demand exceeds supply. In the fourth quarter, it plans to raise the share of its sixth-generation 10-nanometer-class 1c process in conventional DRAM production and expand sales of DDR5 and LPDDR5-based SOCAMM modules for AI servers; in NAND, it aims to lift its flagship 321-layer products to more than half of domestic production capacity. To meet surging HBM demand, it plans to maximize capacity at its Cheongju M15X facility by the end of the year and expand HBM4 production, expecting HBM4 to become its mainstay product in the fourth quarter, surpassing HBM3E in shipment volume and revenue. Investment spending is expected to increase significantly next year, including full-scale operations starting at its first Yongin fab. The company also plans shareholder returns totaling approximately 100 trillion won, including more than 30 trillion won in cash dividends for fiscal 2026 and a total of 60 trillion won in buybacks and cancellations (including the 40 trillion won announced in August), with a commitment to return more than 50% of free cash flow. On Oct. 28 the board approved a third-quarter cash dividend of 14 trillion won and 20 trillion won of share repurchases, of which 10 trillion won will be canceled; the remaining ~10 trillion won is for employee compensation and excluded from shareholder returns. The third-quarter dividend is 20,000 won per share, comprising a 10,000-won dividend reflecting improved earnings and a 10,000-won special dividend sharing gains from its Kioxia investment.
On Oct. 27 local time at Oracle AI World, Intel said it plans to increase shipments of its current-generation Xeon server CPUs to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and to supply its next-generation Xeon processors, codenamed Diamond Rapids. OCI's 14th-generation server platform (X14) will feature Intel's Diamond Rapids processors to improve AI acceleration and general computing performance. OCI X14 will incorporate enhanced Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX), which support reduced-precision floating-point formats including FP8, FP16 and BF16, allowing AI inference applications to run more efficiently and at higher speeds. The platform will also feature Intel Advanced Performance Extensions (APX), which improve execution speed by reducing instruction overhead. These technologies will enhance the efficiency of embedding generation, reranking of search results, and small language model (SLM) inference workloads. This is a planned expansion of the supply partnership; the source does not state the cause.
SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung joined the company's earnings conference call for the first time since taking office, on Oct. 28 at SK hynix's third-quarter 2026 earnings call, to outline its shareholder return policy; his appearance was seen as an effort to restore market confidence following shareholder opposition to the proposed IPO of Solidigm and a sharp decline in SK hynix's share price. Kwak said that after comprehensively considering financial market volatility and the correction in semiconductor industry share prices, the company decided to suspend its review of a Solidigm IPO; SK hynix had disclosed on Oct. 23 that it suspended consideration of both a pre-IPO investment round and an IPO for Solidigm, amid concerns that a separate listing could undermine shareholder value at the parent company through a duplicate listing. Kwak also announced plans to distribute returns from the Kioxia investment through a special dividend: SK hynix decided to distribute approximately 7 trillion won of its Kioxia investment gains as an initial special dividend in the third quarter, equivalent to 10,000 won per share, with the remainder to be included in the year-end dividend after final investment returns for this year are determined; the total amount to be returned through special dividends has yet to be finalized. Industry observers estimate the profit from the fund investment at approximately 20 trillion won (SK hynix joined a Bain Capital-led consortium in 2018 and invested a total of 395 billion yen, approximately 3.9 trillion won at the time, in Kioxia, then known as Toshiba Memory, through fund contributions and purchases of convertible bonds, fully recovering its investment in June when Bain Capital sold its stake in Kioxia). Including an additional dividend of 10,000 won per share reflecting improved operating performance, the company set its third-quarter dividend at 20,000 won per share, totaling approximately 14 trillion won. Including the third-quarter dividend, SK hynix plans to return approximately 100 trillion won to shareholders for the current fiscal year, comprising more than 30 trillion won in cash dividends and more than 60 trillion won in share repurchases and cancellations; first- and second-quarter dividends totaled approximately 265.8 billion won and 273.3 billion won respectively, about 539.1 billion won combined, and after deducting first-half dividends and the approximately 14 trillion won third-quarter dividend from the annual cash dividend target, additional fourth-quarter dividends are estimated to exceed 15 trillion won. The planned repurchases of more than 60 trillion won include the 40 trillion won program announced in August, which was completed last week with shares expected to be canceled soon; at its meeting on Oct. 28, the board approved an additional 20 trillion won in share repurchases, of which 10 trillion won will be used for shareholder returns with all purchased shares to be canceled, while the remaining approximately 10 trillion won will be used for employee compensation (excluded from the annual shareholder return total); based on the annual target, the company is expected to announce at least another 10 trillion won in share repurchases and cancellations during the fourth quarter. Additionally, at the end of the third quarter SK hynix held 114.5 trillion won in cash and cash equivalents with 15.8 trillion won in borrowings; net cash stood at 98.7 trillion won, up 29.3 trillion won from the previous quarter, moving closer to the 100 trillion won net cash financial stability target presented at its annual shareholders' meeting in March.
AMD introduced its entry-level FPGA, Spartan UltraScale+, targeting the industrial systems market, during a webinar held Oct. 27. AMD said its analysis of more than 30 designs showed that Spartan required an average of 40% fewer LUTs to implement the same functions than comparable competing products, with its six-input LUTs handling more complex operations than the four-input LUTs commonly used in competing entry-level products. AMD also claims that, according to its analysis, Spartan delivered an average clock performance 1.8 times faster than comparable FPGAs from Lattice. The product integrates LPDDR4 and LPDDR5X memory controllers, features an increased number of I/O pins, and the basic version of the Vivado FPGA development tool is provided free of charge. AMD plans to supply the Spartan product family through at least 2045, addressing costs from semiconductor discontinuation such as system redesigns or renewed certification in long-life industrial equipment. the source does not state the cause.
On Oct. 28, SKC reported consolidated third-quarter revenue of 638.9 billion won and an operating loss of 49.6 billion won, narrowing by 5.3 billion won from 54.9 billion won in the same period last year, with revenue up about 26% year over year; it remained in the red for the 15th consecutive quarter (since Q1 2023). The source attributes the losses to a prolonged downturn in the battery market caused by slowing growth in electric vehicle demand. The copper foil business led by subsidiary SK Nexilis was particularly weak, posting third-quarter revenue of 248.2 billion won and an operating loss of 53.3 billion won; SK Nexilis aims to return to profitability in the fourth quarter by expanding supply, primarily from its Malaysian plant. The semiconductor materials business posted revenue of 71.8 billion won and operating profit of 21.8 billion won, supported by sales related to AI data centers, automotive applications, robotics and non-memory semiconductors; the chemicals business recorded its third consecutive quarterly profit with revenue of 317.3 billion won and operating profit of 13.4 billion won. SKC raised 1 trillion won in cash through a rights offering in the first half of this year, allocating 410 billion won to debt repayment, cutting its debt-to-equity ratio to 122% from 233% at the end of last year; the remaining 590 billion won will be invested in glass substrates, a next-generation growth business led by subsidiary Absolics. For non-embedded products under development for mobile communications applications, the company is discussing PoC testing with customers and pursuing new projects with multiple customers; for embedded products it is focusing on reliability testing and improving production yields.
battery materialscopper foilsemiconductor materialsSKC, SK Nexilis and 3 totalThe Elec
AP Systems said on Oct. 28 that it will participate in a third-party allotment of new shares by SD Optics, acquiring a stake in the provider of ultra-precision optical inspection solutions through convertible preferred shares (CPS). This is a planned equity investment. Through the investment, AP Systems plans to integrate SD Optics' optical technologies into its equipment, explore new markets and establish a strategic partnership, jointly targeting the next-generation semiconductor and display inspection and metrology markets. The companies will target advanced packaging applications including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) and through-glass vias (TGV) in semiconductor glass substrates, and jointly develop metrology and inspection equipment. Founded in 2010, SD Optics became the first company in the world to commercialize MEMS-based Mirror Array Lens System (MALS) technology; MALS controls an array of microscopic mirrors at a frequency of 12,000 Hz, enabling real-time focus adjustments without mechanical vibration, and is optimized for 3D surface profile measurements of samples with significant height variations and ultra-high-speed vision inspection. The technology has been adopted in ZEISS microscope systems, and SD Optics has supplied inspection modules and equipment to TGV, advanced packaging and display companies. Integrating MALS-based 3D line-scan modules into AP Systems equipment would enable precise, real-time measurement of product surface profiles, height differences and residues.
ultra-precision optical inspection solutionsmetrology and inspection equipmentMALS-based 3D line-scan modulesAP Systems, SD OpticsThe ElecPartnership/M&A
Apple has unveiled a series of new products, including an OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro, an M6 MacBook Pro, an M6 iMac, and an OLED iPad mini; the OLED MacBook Pro is Apple's first Mac with an OLED touchscreen. According to MacRumors, the 14-inch and 16-inch models start at US$2,899 and US$3,399, respectively, representing a US$400 premium over comparable mini-LED versions, and both models are scheduled to go on sale November 6. Apple says the M6 marks its transition to 2nm and is expected to use TSMC's N2 process, delivering up to 30% faster graphics performance and 25% faster AI workloads than the M5, while the OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro uses the earlier M5 Pro and M5 Max chips built on TSMC's third-generation 3nm process. According to The Korea Herald, Samsung Display has reportedly secured exclusive OLED panel supply for Apple's 14-inch and 16-inch models, with industry estimates suggesting orders could reach approximately 2.5 million panels through 2027. Per Commercial Times, institutional investors expect the new lineup to drive high-end replacement demand and potentially boost fourth-quarter orders and shipments for Taiwanese ODM partners Foxconn and Quanta, while major PC ODMs remain cautious about the second-half market outlook, with persistently high memory and storage costs putting upward pressure on notebook ASPs and constraining overall PC shipment growth.
OLED touchscreen panelM6 chipM5 Pro chipApple, TSMC and 5 totalTrendForce
Microsoft and Nvidia publicly released the Surface Laptop Ultra on October 7, built around the application processor originally referred to as the N1X and now renamed the GB10. The chip was co-developed by NVIDIA (which contributed the Grace Blackwell GPU subsystem) and MediaTek (which supplied the multi-core CPU cluster and reportedly also handled full SoC integration duties); it was originally intended for—and may eventually still show up in—Arm-based Windows PCs, but repeated development hurdles reportedly delayed both SoC and system shipment plans, and lingering functional bugs precluded Windows compatibility (explaining the DGX Spark's Linux OS foundation). The machine comes in two versions sharing the same NPU core: 5120-core GPU with 18-core CPU, and 6144-core GPU with 20-core CPU; system memory ranges from 24 GB to 128 GB of LPDDR5x unified memory; SSD options start at 512 GB (PCIe Gen 4) with 1 TB and 2 TB (PCIe Gen 5) configurations; pricing is $2,599 baseline up to $5,899.99 top-end, with delivery promised 'later this year'; an RTX Spark-based developer platform at $5,999.99 and up is also available for pre-order. In the same period, Amazon launched its latest-generation Alexa-branded (no-longer-Fire) tablets in 8-inch, 11-inch and 12-inch 'Pro' flavors, running 'vanilla' Android with a return to the Google Play Store, priced from $299 up to $679.99 (not including cases or the high-end model's optional pen and keyboard accessories). Apple's week began Monday with a new-generation iPad mini (now with the A20 Pro, a slightly larger 8.5-inch display switched from LCD to OLED, priced from $699 and up; the 2024 entry-level 128 GB Wi-Fi-only model was originally $499 but was bumped to $599 in June of this year), Tuesday brought a 14-inch entry-level MacBook Pro now running the M6 SoC (versus last year's M5) plus a 24-inch iMac making a two-generation jump from the M4 to the M6, and today Apple unveiled its first touchscreen-augmented MacBook Pro laptops in both 14-inch and 16-inch displays with ProLED XDR panels and both M5 Pro and Max SoC options, priced from $2,899 to $14,549.
Nvidia RTX Spark N1X (GB10) application processorApple A20 Pro SoCApple M6 SoCApple, Microsoft and 6 totalEDN
TetraMem has completed tapeout of the MLX300, a 12-nm analog in-memory computing (A-IMC) SoC based on multi-level RRAM technology. The chip was developed using Synopsys EDA software delivered through Synopsys Cloud FlexEDA, extending multi-level RRAM-based AI chip development to advanced FinFET nodes. The MLX300 tapeout follows TetraMem's MLX200/MLX200M multi-level RRAM A-IMC SoCs, which completed full-mask tapeout in 2026 on a commercial 22-nm process. The MLX300 uses TetraMem's architecture in a single-chip accelerator for audio, vision, and smaller language models, supporting up to 64 million INT4 parameters on-chip without external DRAM for model-weight storage; TetraMem says the SoC targets energy efficiency exceeding 50 TOPS/W.
ST has launched an automotive sensor platform that combines multi-axis accelerometers and angular-rate sensors in a single package, designed to extend active and passive safety systems and driver-assistance features across vehicle categories from premium to mass-market, with applications including crash protection, rollover detection, airbag deployment, vehicle stability control, and radar beam stabilization. The sensors feature internal diagnostics and support SafeSPI, a serial peripheral interface for automotive safety, and are ST's first four offerings following its integration of NXP's sensors division: NCS1012BAEP (z-axis (yaw) angular-rate sensor and xy low-g accelerometer), NCS1012CAEP (x-axis (roll) angular-rate sensor and yz low-g accelerometer), NCS1012EAEP (x-axis (roll) angular-rate sensor and xy medium-g accelerometer), and NCS10135AEP (z-axis (yaw) angular-rate sensor and xyz low-g accelerometer). Angular-rate sensors offer full-scale ranges of ±125 dps, ±250 dps, or ±350 dps, with integrated low-pass filtering (12.5–400-Hz cutoff options) and operation from −40°C to +105°C; low-g accelerometers cover ±1.50 g to ±34 g, while medium-g versions cover ±15.5 g to ±150 g and feature an independent signal chain to minimize noise. The combo sensors are now in production in 24-pin QFN packages with wettable flanks.
Melexis introduced the programmable Hall switch MLX92342 for remote position detection in automotive systems such as seatbelt buckles. The 2-wire, PCB-less sensor IC provides a valid output and generates a diagnostic safety signal in less than 100 µs; this signal indicates a fault condition, allowing the ECU to distinguish a sensor malfunction from a valid buckle-state reading. With integrated on-chip diagnostics, the MLX92342 is certified as an ISO 26262 ASIL B SEooC and qualified to AEC-Q100. ESD protection is rated at 8-kV HBM, 15-kV system-level contact discharge, and 25-kV system-level indirect discharge. It supports magnetic latch, unipolar switch, and omnipolar switch configurations, with a magnetic operating range of 0.5 mT to 200 mT. Beyond seatbelt buckle detection, it can be used in window lifters, brake fluid level sensors, active air skirts, locks, valves, and actuators. The MLX92342 is available now, and the locked, pre-programmed MLX92341 is also available.