The logic die at the bottom of a high-bandwidth memory (HBM) stack has become the semiconductor industry's newest contested territory. Within weeks, SK Hynix has been reported to be weighing Intel alongside TSMC, Samsung Electronics has been reported to be pairing its own foundry with TSMC, and Micron has confirmed that TSMC will manufacture its next-generation base die. What began as a single-vendor arrangement is turning into a multi-front sourcing contest — and the assumption that a second source automatically means a cheaper one is already being challenged.
South Korea's neural processing unit (NPU) startups are moving from chip development toward commercial deployment, but limited experience operating at scale remains a major hurdle to winning global customers.
Taiwan's AI server supply chain continued to show strong year-over-year growth in August, although performance varied significantly across baseboard management controller (BMC), cable/connector, and server-case suppliers.
DeepSeek is reportedly set to hire Wentao Yan, a partner at venture capital firm GL Ventures, as its first CFO. If the appointment takes place, it would happen at an important time for the Chinese AI startup as it seeks to go public, begins a large expansion of its workforce, and invests in chipmaking and computing capacity.
DIGITIMES observed that Nvidia's newly announced NVHBM is not a brand-new memory technology, but rather an extension of existing custom HBM (cHBM). It is a managed cHBM design that moves the memory controller, which originally sat on the XPU, into the HBM logic base die, and pairs it with custom physical-layer (PHY) and die-to-die (D2D) interfaces. In strategic terms, Nvidia is extending its moat from GPUs to the memory architecture of custom ASICs, and is trying to define how future custom AI chips connect to memory, hook into scale-up networks, and come together as complete AI racks.
Taiwan's smaller IC design firms posted a strong revenue recovery in the first half of 2026, but the gains may prove difficult to extend. DIGITIMES said higher prices and early customer buying lifted sales, even as consumer demand remained soft. The second half now looks exposed to weaker momentum.
