Microsoft unveiled its third-generation in-house AI chip Maia 300, positioned as the "primary AI inference system" for its products and services, with production planned from 2027 and the Azure Maia family scaling to multi-gigawatt deployments starting in 2027.
Memory supply tightness will persist through 2027, with DRAM lead times at 20 weeks versus a balanced level of 8 weeks; vendors are shifting PC DRAM capacity to server DRAM, and HDD lead times remain at 50 weeks.
TSMC and GlobalFoundries signed a $2 billion agreement under which GlobalFoundries will manufacture silicon interposers for TSMC's CoWoS advanced packaging ecosystem at its Malta, New York plant, with volume production ramping in the first half of 2028.
Precisely aligning and fixing fiber array units—FAU coupling—has become a critical bottleneck in CPO manufacturing and testing. At SEMICON Taiwan 2026, TSMC unveiled an upgraded COUPE roadmap: per-chip bandwidth reaching 3.2 Tbps in 2026, doubling to 6.4 Tbps in 2027, with a long-term target exceeding 51.2 Tbps. Integrating optics on the substrate can deliver a 4X power-efficiency gain, with OOI reaching 10X.
TrendForce's weekly radar focuses on server CPUs: agentic AI has pushed lead times to 25–30 weeks, well above the balanced level of 16–20 weeks. Meta's AI agent Muse reportedly surpassed ChatGPT in downloads early after launch, driving AMD's market cap past $1 trillion for the first time, and at Connect 2026 Meta unveiled the Meta Charm handheld device powered by Muse.
At the TSMC OIP Conference held in Santa Clara, California, SK hynix showcased its next-generation memory portfolio and won the Partner of the Year award (3DFabric-HBM Integration category) for the second consecutive year.
TrendForce takes a deep dive into 3D advanced packaging and hybrid bonding: TSMC's SoIC uses 3D interconnect with 56x the interconnect density and 5x the energy efficiency of CoWoS, entered mass production in 2025 with a 6µm bond pitch, and plans to shrink to 4.5µm by 2029; Intel's Foveros Direct, at a 9µm pitch, enters mass production in 1H26 with the Clearwater Forest Xeon 6+.
TrendForce maps the latest landscape of 2.5D/3D advanced packaging in the AI chip supply chain: TSMC's 5.5x reticle CoWoS is in mass production with yields above 98%, with plans to expand beyond 14x after 2029; Intel's EMIB-T yields have improved significantly, expanding beyond 8x this year and over 12x by 2028, targeting customer mass production in 2027.