Following TSMC’s recent acquisition of Innolux’s Tainan plant for NTD 17 billion, another Taiwanese panel maker, AUO, announced on August 27 that it will sell three idled manufacturing facilities in Tainan, Southern Taiwan as well, as memory giant Micron emerged as the buyer.

Part of buildings and facilities located in Taichung, central Taiwan, would also be sold to Micron. According to a report from Economic Daily News, the total transaction amount is NTD 8.1 billion, with an estimated profit of NTD 4.718 billion, as the deal is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

The same report indicates that after Micron’s failed attempt to acquire Innolux’s 4th Plant in Tainan (5.5-generation LCD panel plant), it turned to AUO for a plant purchase.

To focus on its operational strategy, revitalize assets, and optimize its financial structure, AUO’s board of directors has approved the sale, the report suggests. By acquiring the facilities, Micron plans to further expand its DRAM business in Taiwan, with expectations to develop high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI applications.

Industry sources cited by the report have further interpreted the recent plant sales by Taiwan’s leading panel manufacturers as a sign of the rising influence of Chinese LCD companies like BOE and CSOT.

With the Chinese companies dominating the LCD industry, Taiwanese panel manufacturers are moving away from volume-based competition and are gradually selling off plants to mitigate risks associated with price fluctuations in the panel market. Micron’s active investments in Taiwan further strengthen the country’s semiconductor cluster advantage.

Reportedly, AUO pointed out that it originally had three color filter plants in Tainan: the Gen-4 C4A, the Gen-5 C5D, and the Gen-6 C6C.

Among them, the C5D and C6C plants were closed last August, leaving only the C4A plant in production. All three plants are being sold to Micron, with the C4A plant continuing operations under a sale-and-leaseback arrangement.

Micron stated that its operations in Taiwan are designed to meet the growing product demands of the AI era and to reinforce Micron’s market leadership. Through this acquisition, Micron plans to leverage this site to focus on front-end wafer testing,  to supporting the ongoing expansion of DRAM production at Micron’s Taichung and Taoyuan facilities.

Read more

• [News] Micron Advances in Acquiring Innolux’s Southern Taiwan Facility After TSMC Outbids It for the G5.5 Plant
• [News] TSMC Acquires Innolux’s Plant in Southern Taiwan to Expand Advanced Packaging Capacity

(Photo credit: Micron)

In mid-August, Samsung is said to be accelerating its progress on next-gen HBM, targeting to tape-out HBM4 by the end of this year. Now it seems SK hynix has maintained its competitive edge, as the company aims to tape out HBM4 in October, which will be used to power NVIDIA’s Rubin AI chips, according to the reports by Wccftech and ZDNet.

In addition, the reports note that SK hynix also plans to tape out HBM4 for AMD’s AI chips, which is expected to take place a few month later.

To further prepare for the strong demand from AI chip giants’ upcoming product launch, SK hynix is assembling development teams to supply HBM4 to NVIDIA and AMD, according to Wccftech and ZDNet.

Per SK hynix’s product roadmap, the company plans to launch 12-layer stacked HBM4 in the second half of 2025 and 16-layer in 2026. With NVIDIA’s Rubin series planned for 2026, it is expected to adopt HBM4 12Hi with 8 clusters per GPU.

SK hynix is the major HBM3e supplier for NVIDIA’s AI chips, as the memory giant has taken the lead by starting shipping the product a few months ago, followed by Micron. Samsung’s HBM3, on the other hand, have been cleared by NVIDIA in July, while its HBM3e is still striving to pass NVIDIA’s qualification.

According to the reports, the introduction of HBM4 represents another major milestone for SK hynix, as it offers the fastest DRAM with exceptional power efficiency and higher bandwidth.

HBM4 will feature double the channel width of HBM3E, offering 2048 bits versus 1024 bits. Moreover, it supports stacking 16 DRAM dies, up from 12 in HBM3e, with options for 24Gb and 32Gb layers. This advancement will enable a capacity of 64GB per stack, compared to 32GB with HBM3e, the reports suggest.

On August 19, SK hynix showcased the ambition on securing its leadership on HBM, claiming that the company is developing a product with performance up to 30 times higher than current HBM.

Read more

• [News] HBM Technological Battle to be on the Next Level
• [News] SK Hynix President to Join Semicon Taiwan, Bolstering HBM Partnership with TSMC and NVIDIA

(Photo credit: SK hynix)

China’s debut AAA game, Black Myth: Wukong, has achieved remarkable success just four days post-launch. The game has sold over 10 million copies on Steam alone, with peak simultaneous online players reaching 3 million. Priced around NT$1,280 per copy, its total sales revenue has hit NT$12.8 billion (approximately USD$400 million).

According to the Commercial Times, the game’s detailed graphics and cinema-quality 3D scenes have driven gamers to upgrade their memory and graphics cards, boosting related hardware sales.

Industry sources cited by the Commercial Times predict that this surge in China’s self-developed gaming trend will enhance demand for memory and graphics card upgrades. Companies such as ADATA, Kingston, and Teamgroup, as well as Gigabyte, ASUS, and MSI, are expected to see a corresponding increase in sales performance.

Black Myth: Wukong, based on the famous “Journey to the West” IP, has topped Steam’s charts with over 1.75 million simultaneous online players since its August 20 release. Developed by GameScience, a company that had faced near-bankruptcy twice in its six years of operation, the game gained prominence after Tencent’s investment.

Players cited by Commercial Times have noted that the game’s high-resolution graphics require at least 32GB of RAM to run smoothly, with many standard laptops and PCs, typically equipped with 16GB, being unable to support it. Graphics card upgrades are crucial, with minimum specifications costing over NT$10,000 (approximately USD$314). The high price of NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 card raises questions about whether players will invest heavily in upgrades.

The Black Myth: Wukong phenomenon has sparked extensive discussion. Amid a mobile game-dominated market, the resurgence of interest in standalone games signifies that China’s game production standards are now rivaling those of Japan and Korea, with international gamers and bloggers actively engaging in conversations about the title.

(Photo credit: Stram)

According to a report by the Nikkei, Japanese chip manufacturer Kioxia has submitted its initial public offering (IPO) application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, triggering a long-awaited move as the development of artificial intelligence (AI) drives a surge in semiconductor demand. The company aims to go public in October, the report notes.

According to a report by Nikkei, citing sources, Kioxia’s valuation is expected to exceed JPY 1.5 trillion (roughly USD 10.3 billion). The deal is anticipated to surpass the JPY 420 billion raised by chip equipment maker Kokusai Electric during its 2023 IPO, which was the largest of that year. It is also expected to exceed the projected listing of Tokyo Metro in October, estimated at JPY 640 billion to 700 billion.

This move comes at a time when the Japanese government is increasing its support for investment in the chip industry, aiming to secure the supply of critical components amid rising geopolitical tensions.

As per another report from Anue, Kioxia had once planned to conduct its IPO in 2020.

However, the plan was postponed due to the uncertainty in the global chip market caused by U.S.-China trade tensions and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, Kioxia’s target valuation exceeded 2 trillion yen, which was later reduced to 1.7 trillion yen.

Last year, Kioxia engaged in merger talks with Western Digital’s flash memory business, but the negotiations stalled due to opposition from Kioxia’s shareholder, SK hynix.

Read more

• [News] Kioxia Ends Production Cuts, Signaling Potential Downturn in NAND Flash Market?
• [News] Kioxia and Western Digital Restart Merger Plan, SK Hynix Reportedly Remains Opposition

(Photo credit: Kioxia)

According to a report from the Commercial Times, SK hynix is expected to announce a plan of closer collaboration with TSMC and NVIDIA during the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in September, which is likely to focusing on the development of next-generation HBM. This partnership is expected to further strengthen their leadership in the supply of critical components for AI servers.

Semicon Taiwan will be held from September 4 to 6, and sources cited by the same report indicate that SK hynix President Justin Kim will attend the event and deliver a keynote speech for the first time.

Upon arriving in Taiwan, Justin Kim is expected to meet with TSMC executives. The report, citing rumors, suggests that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang might also join the meeting, further strengthening the alliance among the tech giants.

The core of this collaboration will revolve around HBM technology. In the past, SK hynix used its own processes to manufacture base dies up to HBM3e (the fifth-generation HBM).

However, industry sources cited by the report reveal that SK hynix will adopt TSMC’s logic process to manufacture the base die starting from HBM4, which would allow the memory giant to customize products for its clients in terms of performance and efficiency.

Industry sources cited by the report also indicate that SK hynix and TSMC have agreed to collaborate on the development and production of HBM4, scheduled for mass production in 2026.

This collaboration will reportedly involve manufacturing HBM4 interface chips using 12FFC+ (12nm class) and 5nm processes to achieve smaller interconnect spacing and enhance memory performance for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) processors.

Per SK hynix’s product roadmap, the company plans to launch a 12-layer stacked HBM4 in the second half of 2025 and 16-layer in 2026. TSMC, on the other hand, is also working to strengthen and expand its CoWoS-L and CoWoS-R packaging capacity to support the large-scale production of HBM4.

SK hynix has been the major supplier of HBM for NVIDIA’s AI GPUs, and with the upcoming Rubin series planned for 2026, it is expected to adopt HBM4 12Hi with 8 clusters per GPU. This partnership between SK hynix, TSMC and NVIDIA, therefore, is expected to expanding its influence and widening the gap with Samsung.

Read more

• [News] SK hynix, TSMC, and NVIDIA Reportedly Forge Alliance to Develop Next-Generation HBM
• [News] TSMC Reportedly Secures Another AI Opportunity, Winning Order from SK Hynix

(Photo credit: SK hynix)