[News] SEMICON Taiwan Highlights AI Infrastructure, CPO; Google AI Chief Technologist to Make Asia Keynote Debut

SEMICON Taiwan 2026 kicks off this week. Central News Agency notes that this year’s exhibition will be the largest on record, with its focus expanding to encompass the data center ecosystem led by cloud service providers (CSPs). This expansion reflects a broader shift toward “full-ecosystem” integration, as noted by Commercial Times. While previous editions focused largely on technology roadmaps from manufacturers and packaging and testing companies such as TSMC and ASE, this year’s forums will give a more prominent role to downstream customers and cloud giants, including Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, AMD, and MediaTek.

Underscoring this shift, Commercial Times notes that Google Senior Vice President and Chief Technologist for AI Infrastructure Amin Vahdat will deliver his first public keynote in Asia. Drawing on an integrated perspective spanning custom chips, data centers, and high-speed networking, Vahdat will share Google’s vision for the future of AI infrastructure and the evolution of the semiconductor ecosystem.

The cross-industry focus will also be reflected in a fireside chat featuring executives from ASE, MediaTek, Foxconn, and the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA), bringing together perspectives spanning IC design, wafer manufacturing, packaging and testing, substrates, and electronics manufacturing, as noted by Commercial Times.

AI Scaling Puts Advanced Technologies in Focus

Commercial Times adds that this year’s forums will cover key technologies needed to scale AI across the entire ecosystem. Topics range from cloud infrastructure and accelerated computing to networking, optical interconnects, memory, power management, and hyperscale AI system co-design.

Among the key technology themes, TSMC will highlight heterogeneous integration for the AI era, with its presentation set to cover 2.5D and 3D integration, chiplets, thermal solutions and stress management for high-density packaging, as well as 3DFabric and system-technology co-optimization (STCO), Economic Daily News reports.

Silicon photonics will be another key focus. Economic Daily News notes that U.S.-based Onto Innovation will discuss in-line inspection and metrology, Germany’s ficonTEC will cover automated electro-optical testing from wafers and dies to modules, while Japan’s Advantest will focus on scaling CPO testing from R&D to mass production. Lam Research will also present manufacturing equipment technologies for silicon photonics. Of the five semiconductor manufacturing and inspection equipment suppliers speaking at the forum, Enlitech is the only Taiwan-based company, the report indicates. Local equipment makers remain relatively underrepresented, particularly in wafer-level process control and metrology.

Beyond these areas, Central News Agency notes that SEMICON Taiwan will introduce new zones focused on quantum technology and intelligent wafer manufacturing, with the latter featuring AI-powered digital twins, and humanoid robots. Other emerging applications on display will include SiC and GaN technologies for electric vehicles and 6G, as well as edge AI and intelligent robotic vision.

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(Photo credit: SEMI)