#cmos-fabrication

#cmos-fabrication

Samsung has reportedly swapped out its homemade OLED panels in some mid-range models for the Chinese CSOT-made OLEDs, aiming to reduce overall costs and avoid raising consumer prices.

Lace Lithography uses a beam of helium atoms rather than light to etch chip patterns, achieving a width of approximately 0.1 nanometres, which is about 135 times finer than ASML's EUV light.

SK Hynix's order for nearly $8 billion in EUV machines from ASML is the largest publicly announced single order in the company's history, aimed at enhancing advanced memory chip production.

The need for higher performance and more energy-efficient chips is driving high growth rates for leading-edge logic, high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging. These are areas where Applied is the process equipment leader, and we expect to grow our semiconductor equipment business over 20 percent this calendar year.

Our custom accelerator business is progressing very well across five customers. Anthropic will soon implement one gigawatt of Broadcom-baked TPUs, and we expect the AI company plans a three-gigawatt deployment in 2027. Meta will install multiple gigawatts of Broadcom's XPU accelerators in 2027 and beyond. OpenAI will deploy over one gigawatt of compute capacity based on custom XPUs in 2027.

U.S. regulators have allegedly drafted rules that would require U.S. government approval to ship AI chips anywhere outside the U.S., according to Bloomberg, citing sources. This would give the U.S. significantly more control over companies like AMD and Nvidia.

The gold rush across the high-end processor market might help Apple's processor manufacturing partner, TSMC, drive harder bargains than in the past. That's because Apple's huge appetite for processors is being met by fast-growing demand for chips for servers. As a result, the cost of the chips used inside Macs, iPads, and iPhones will likely increase, putting even more inflationary pressure on Cupertino's bottom line.

When Donald Trump nominated Elbridge Colby as the undersecretary of defense for policy, the news stirred headlines in Taiwan. Colby, who has since been confirmed, had repeatedly stated on social media that if China ever invaded Taiwan, the US military should destroy TSMC, the world's most important chip manufacturer, to prevent it from falling into Chinese hands. The provocative suggestion has been echoed by Democratic Representative Seth Moulton,

When I asked him how bad things really were, Clarke looked at me with a sigh. "Look, I've been at this a long time. This is the worst shortage I've ever seen. Demand is way ahead of supply. And it's driven by AI. It's driven by infrastructure. You've seen the spot market price-it's up to five times from September. That will manifest. It already has in contract pricing."

Micron broke snowy winter ground in New York on Friday to begin building a chip fab that promises to bring up to 50,000 jobs and much-needed computer memory production to US shores, as the AI boom continues to push memory prices up. The company's stock surged on the news that shovels had been put to work on the facility first announced in 2022, which had been bedeviled by environmental delays.

Micron's version of events says it's signed a letter of intent to acquire Powerchip's entire P5 site in Tongluo, Taiwan, for total cash consideration of US$1.8 billion. "The acquisition includes an existing 300 mm fab cleanroom of 300,000 square feet and will further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions," the company stated, adding that the company "expects this acquisition to contribute to meaningful DRAM wafer output beginning in the second half of calendar 2027."

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company crushed Q4 earnings, reporting record profits that blew past Wall Street's expectations. Revenue hit $33.73 billion against a $1.03 trillion consensus, while EPS came in at $19.50 versus $17.89 expected. TSMC raised Q1 2026 guidance to $34.6-$35.8 billion with gross margins expanding to 63-65%, up from 62.3% last quarter. The market's response was immediate: semiconductor stocks rallied across the board in premarket trading, with ASML crossing $500 billion in market cap.

The memory chip stocks have been really heating up to start the year, thanks in part to the AI-driven RAM shortage, which could last well into the year's end and perhaps beyond. Undoubtedly, AI demand is showing no signs of slowing down, and as the high-performance memory needs continue to blast off, questions linger as to how the top memory players can step up to meet the needs of this unprecedented boom.