At Singapore's Innovate Together 2026 conference on September 25, executives and researchers from A*STAR's Institute of Microelectronics (IME), KLA, ASM International, the National University of Singapore (NUS), the SHINE Centre, and ASMPT discussed how advanced packaging is evolving beyond conventional chip integration, with optical interconnects, panel-level packaging, and talent development emerging as key challenges.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, arrived at the White House on the evening of September 24 US time to attend a state dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.
Multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) prices for AI servers have continued to climb, while prices for general-purpose components used in consumer appliances have dropped sharply. The split in the market has opened more room for Chinese suppliers in midrange and general-purpose categories as major manufacturers shift capacity toward higher-value products.
AI server, high-speed networking, and memory demand continued to lift Taiwan's PCB industry in the second quarter of 2026, boosting demand for substrates, high-layer-count boards, and HDI products. Tight supplies of advanced materials and rising raw-material costs also pushed PCB prices higher quarter by quarter.
China is trying to carve out a foothold in semiconductor supply-chain standards with Micro Han Xin, a miniaturized version of its home-grown barcode designed for chips and other components too small for conventional labels.
Bright LED Electronics said its core profit rebounded in the first half of 2026, helped by recovering printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) demand and a better product mix. The LED packaging maker expects second-half performance to be roughly in line with the first half, while seeing growth momentum extend into 2027.
Semiconductor epitaxy maker Episil Precision said on September 22 that rising demand from AI data centers has created two main growth engines. Demand for silicon photonics optical communication modules is driving a surge in germanium silicon (GeSi) epitaxy demand, with the sector projected to grow 3.5- to 4-fold in 2027 and demand visibility extending to 2028.
Printed circuit board (PCB) maker Zhen Ding Technology (ZDT) Group completed pricing of its sixth overseas convertible bond issue on September 22, raising a total of US$800 million (about NT$25.224 billion). The company plans to issue the bonds on September 29 and list them on the Singapore Exchange, with proceeds to be used entirely to replenish working capital and support technology development for high-end products.
As AI computing workloads surge, demand for higher GPU and CPU performance is triggering exponential growth in data center power density and energy consumption. Nvidia's transition toward an 800V high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power architecture is driving hardware upgrades across sidecar power cabinets and battery backup units (BBUs), while spurring demand for customized high-voltage NP0 (C0G) multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs).
While market focus surrounding AI infrastructure has centered primarily on core computing components—such as GPUs, CPUs, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and networking hardware—rising chip performance, power consumption, and rack density are rapidly elevating the need for power stability. As a result, high-end multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) are emerging as critical passive components in next-generation AI deployments.
Lattice Semiconductor recently unveiled its next-generation secure control field-programmable gate array (FPGA) series, the Mach-N2. Built on the Nexus 2 small FPGA platform, the series features embedded flash memory, a hardware root of trust, and post-quantum cryptography (PQC) compliant with the US National Security Agency's Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0 (CNSA 2.0). It targets long-lifecycle infrastructure, such as data centers, that must proactively defend against emerging quantum computing threats.
China's fast-rising AI models are running into a compute supply bottleneck as demand for advanced packaging substrates surges, with ByteDance reportedly preparing to spend CNY100 billion (US$14.9 billion) a year on large-scale chip substrate purchases by 2030. Supply chain sources say the scramble for packaging substrate capacity is intensifying across Huawei HiSilicon, Hygon Information Technology, ByteDance, and major outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) players, even as the industry races to expand output.
