EcoPro BM was developing a sodium-ion cathode for batteries and was in talks with car makers for potential supply deals.Dongwook Lee, director of the Future Materials Division at EcoPro BM, told TheElec during Interbattery Europe 2024 being held in Munich that the company was developing various batt

This week, multiple acquaintances messaged me to ask whether a certain report was true.The report, made in South Korean media, claimed that Nvidia asked Samsung to change the design of their high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and that this would cause further delays in supply. Coincidentally, Samsung’s sha

DB Hitek is expected to manufacture a chip that will go into Tesla cars, TheElec has learned.The automotive chip is being designed by a US fabless chip company, which will conduct audits of DB Hitek in June and October.The June audit will be conducted by the fabless alone, while in October Tesla wil

South Korean memory chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix are expected to spply hybrid bonding in their upcoming 3D DRAM.SK Hynix said during the International Memory Workshop 2024 conference held in Seoul last week that it will apply wafer bonding in its 3D DRAM production.Wafer bonding is also called hy

Samsung is expected to manufacture slightly more smartphones and tablets than it aimed during the second quarter, thanks to the recovery of the global smartphone market.The South Korean tech giant is projected to produce 49.9 million units during the second quarter, 3% more than its forecast made in

Ultra-thin glass (UTG) maker Dowoo Insys is planning to list on the Korean Exchange next year.Company CEO Lee Jae-gyu, told TheElec on Friday that Dowoo Insys will file for the preliminary review to go public to financial authorities in the summer.Kiwoom Securities is underwriting the deal. The secu

Samsung Foundry is expected to launch 1.4-nanometer (nm) process, back side power delivery network (BSPDN), and silicon photonics in 2027.During its Samsung Foundry Forum held in San Jose on Wednesday, the South Korean tech giant’s contract chip production business unit announced its technology road

South Korean AI chip companies Sapeon and Rebellions seeking a merger to become more competitive as competition heats up among AI chip companies amid the boom.The pair said on Wednesday that the merged entity will be inaugurated within the year after they sign the merger deal within the third quarte

Samsung Display was looking for a new contractor to handle the back-end etching work for its rigid and hybrid OLED panels, TheElec has learned.This was because one of its contractors for this work, Soulbrain, is planning to exit the business, sources said.Samsung Display currently manufactures rigid

AI neural processing unit (NPU) firm Aim Future will open its Series B funding round in the second half of the year, Aim Future CEO Changsoo Kim told TheElec.The startup will open the round sometime between October and November and aim to close sometime in the first half of 2025 with the aim to secu

Chinese display panel maker CSOT has sent requests for quotations to South Korean equipment makers for Gen 6 OLED production equipment, TheElec has learned.Multiple equipment makers have received the request and are reviewing the profitability of assembling the kits, sources said.CSOT will decide ne

The commercialization of glass substrates will threaten the dominance of advanced packaging technology currently in use such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) of TSMC, according a university professor.Glass substrates’ target market was clear and they will be used in AI and server semiconductors

LG Display has received approval from customer Apple to supply OLED panels for iPhone 16 Pro Max, TheElec has learned.This is ahead of Samsung Display, which has never happened before, sources said.Last month, LG Display and Samsung Display both received approval to supply OLED panels for iPhone 16

SK Materials Airplus said on Monday that it will spend 700 billion won to build plants to produce gaseous nitrogen (GN2) and clean dry air (CDA).The two gases are used in chip production. GN2 is used a carrier gas to transport precursors on the wafers during deposition. It is also used to prevent ox

Samsung shared in a recent paper that it believes hybrid bonding was needed to manufacture a 16-stack high-bandwidth memory (HBM).In its paper published during the 2024 IEEE 74th Electronic Components and Technology Conference held in Colorado last month titled, in Korean, D2W (die to wafer) Copper

TSMC’s design house partner Asicland has won AI chip startup DeepX as its customer, TheElec has learned.DeepX had previously used Samsung Foundry’s design house Gaonchips as its production partner.But the startup recently signed a deal with Asicland to use TSMC’s 12-nanometer (nm) node to manufactur

The global semiconductor market is expected to grow 16% on-year this year, according to analyst firm World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS).The market will grow to be worth US$611.2 billion this year, WSTS noted. Its growth projection also increased from the 13.1% it gave late last year.Demand

Precursor producer Eco&&Dream is aiming to turn a profit this year and hit 100 billion won in revenue.The company is also aiming to expand its annual precursor production capacity to 100,000 metric tonnes, its research head Kim Tae-min told TheElec.Eco&Dream saw its revenue for the first quarter sur

Nvidia has unveiled its next-generation AI platform dubbed Rubin, a successor to Blackwell that will launch in 2026.The company will also launch a new CPU platform dubbed Vera the same year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a keynote address at National Taiwan University.Huang didn’t share the specs

Hanwha Precision Machinery has won a deal with SK Hynix to supply thermal compression (TC) bonders used in the production of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), TheElec has learned.With ASMPT (which Dutch equipment maker ASM is the largest shareholder with a 25% share) also agreeing to develop TC bonder un