Breaking down TSMC's glass core substrate slide On June 11, at JPCA Show 2026 in Japan, TSMC gave a roughly 40-slide presentation titled "Advanced Packaging Technology Essential to the Evolution of AI" (AIの進化に不可欠な先端パッケージング技術). One slide from the deck, titled "Glass Substrate Development for CoWoS," has since leaked online and widespread attention. Here's a closer read of that slide (see attached image). I'll skip the technical background that is already widely available. One thing to flag: the "COP" on the slide does not stand for Chip-on-Package. It means Coplanarity. ▌ Key conclusions: 1. TSMC has officially announced a partnership with Ibiden and Innolux to develop a glass core substrate. The structure is a three-layer design, a glass core sandwiched between two ABF build-up layers. This is the "oS" in CoPoS. 2. The market underestimates how important the glass core substrate is. It's a must-have capability for TSMC. In other words, within CoPoS the "oS" matters more than the "CoP", which is also why, when it was tested, it was paired with the existing CoW rather than with CoP. 3. The glass core substrate costs several times more per unit than existing ABF substrates. The glass processed by Innolux is very expensive per unit and is the single most critical material. Besides Nvidia, two US-based customers have also expressed strong interest. ▌ Industry checks tied to this slide: 1. The glass core substrate shown on the slide is cut from a full-size 250×250mm one. The ABF build-up layers mainly use Ajinomoto's GL107, mixed with ABF-GCP, and were tested at 24–28 layers, which is the mainstream ABF spec for AI chips in 2027–2028. 2. The CoW used in TSMC's experiment is a test vehicle. It is sufficient to validate the most challenging mechanical-structure issues that arise when working with composite materials. Good results mean TSMC, Ibiden, and Innolux have together broken through the critical technical bottleneck. 3. Ibiden currently handles cutting the 250×250mm glass core substrate. When the 510×515mm format is used for pre-mass-production simulation in 2H27, if Ibiden still wants to reduce production complexity to protect its ultra-high gross margins, it may hand the cutting over to Innolux, which is more familiar with the properties of glass. ▌ The leaked slide shows the validation results of pairing CoW with the "oS" in CoPoS, i.e., the glass core substrate (labeled "glass-SBT" on the slide). This addresses the "Substrate mechanical and electrical Dilemma" raised on the previous slide, and it strongly underscores how important the "oS" is within CoPoS. 1. Within CoPoS, what CoP solves is production efficiency / cutting economics, which ties to cost and price. What the oS solves is warpage and durability, which determines whether the chip can be made at all, and whether it can work. 2. CoP and oS complement each other well when integrated, but looking out over the next few years their technical roles still differ. CoP is a very-nice-to-have optimization, and going without it simply means a more expensive chip. But the oS is a must-have. Without it, even being able to make a usable chip is in doubt. 3. Comparing their roles isn't about elevating oS at the expense of CoP. It comes down to the practical question of which technical piece customers are willing to pay for. Details below. ▌ The real gold here is the power integrity (PI) improvement shown on the slide. This matters a great deal to customers, and it means that once glass core substrate production stabilizes, TSMC's profitability and competitive edge should rise in tandem. 1. How it works: the glass core substrate is thin → the vertical conduction path through TGV (through-glass vias) is short → conduction-path resistance (R) and loop inductance (L) both drop → PI improves. 2. Why it matters to customers: better PI → more stable power delivery → frees up power headroom → room to integrate more transistors, or to push clock speeds higher → more AI compute. 3. For customers, production efficiency is TSMC's basic responsibility, so they won't pay extra for it. But gains in AI compute translate directly into the customer's own competitiveness and profit, so customers are willing to pay for that. This is why Nvidia is so positive on the glass core substrate. 4. For TSMC, the glass core substrate raises yield and lowers cost while also boosting both the compute and the selling price of AI chips. It's both a cost-cutting tool and a pricing lever, a plus for profitability and competitiveness alike. 5. Substrate cost currently accounts for a low single-digit percentage of an AI chip's BOM, while losses from packaging yield run roughly 5–10× the substrate cost. So even if the glass core substrate ends up costing several times more than today's, its share of the BOM stays low, and it can cut the losses from packaging yield. The high unit price is therefore not expected to dampen customers' willingness to adopt it. ▌ In the Q&A after the presentation, an audience member asked about TGV details for the glass core substrate. TSMC declined to answer on the spot, because TGV is the key technology behind the glass core substrate, and the core know-how currently sits with TSMC and Innolux. By contrast, when another attendee asked about integrating IVR, eDTC, and LSI, TSMC answered at length. ▌ According to industry checks, if all goes well, TSMC is aiming to start mass production of the glass core substrate in 4Q28–1Q29, to match the cadence of Nvidia's AI chip iterations. As a side note: the Ibiden earnings presentation slide that many people have been circulating lists the glass core substrate timeline as CY30. My read is this: Ibiden, which has always been conservative and cautious in public, has now formally put the glass core substrate on its roadmap, which further confirms the long-term trend for this technology. That said, some other details on Ibiden's slide don't fully line up with what's known in the market. For example, its reticle timeline is off from TSMC's public claims by about a generation, and the Rubin Ultra substrate size is clearly larger than the 90×90 it marked for CY26–27. It's a reminder to always cross-check across multiple sources when forecasting the future.

Sakana AI CEOの David Ha（@hardmaru）が、Tim Romero 氏のポッドキャスト Disrupting Japan Podcast に出演しました。 日本におけるAIの未来は、米国や中国とは少し違った形を取り得るのか。Sakana AIの内側から何が見えているのか。そうしたテーマで、長めの対談を行っています。 Davidは、Sakana AI の事業展開戦略、メガバンクとの取り組みがPoCから本番運用へと進みつつある現状、巨大なフロンティアモデル一つに依存するよりも複数のモデルを束ねるオーケストレーションのほうが長期的には合理的であるという見方、そして実務における「AI主権」とはスタック全体を自前で所有することではなく、グローバルなサプライチェーンの中で、AIを国内で開発・適応・運用していく能力を確保することだと、Davidは語りました。 対話のなかでは、当社の研究成果やプロダクトにも多く触れました。Sakana Fuguは、強化学習で訓練したオーケストレーションモデルで、複数ステップのタスクを多様なLLMに振り分けます。Namazuは、日本の知識や価値観を反映するようにポストトレーニングを施した、オープンウェイトモデルのシリーズです。東京のRSI Labは、The AI Scientistから続く取り組みとして、再帰的自己改善とAIによる科学的発見を専門に扱う研究組織です。共同創業者のLlion Jonesは、Transformerそのものを超えるアーキテクチャの探求という、より長期的な目標を追い続けています。 最後に「日本について一つだけ変えられるとしたら」と問われたDavidの答えは、「希望（hope）」でした。 「皆が集団として希望を感じていることが必要だと思います。その希望こそが、物事を動かしていく。日本に希望をもたらすのは何でしょうか。お金でしょうか。減税でしょうか。社会保障の充実でしょうか。おそらく、そのどれでもないはずです。もし魔法の杖を一本持てるとしたら、日本の人々が未来をもっと楽観的に捉えられるようにしたい。希望によって変化が起こり、その変化がさらなる希望をもたらすのではないでしょうか。」 ⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ Our CEO David Ha joined Tim Romero on Disrupting Japan Podcast for a long conversation on how the future of AI may take a different shape in Japan than in the U.S. or China, and on what that looks like from inside Sakana AI. David walks through Sakana AI’s go-to-market strategy, how Japanese megabanks have moved real AI workflows from proof-of-concept into production, why orchestration across many models is likely to win out over a single massive frontier model, and what sovereign AI actually means in practice: not owning the entire stack, but having the capability to develop, adapt, and run AI domestically as part of a global supply chain. The conversation also covers the research directions behind the company. Sakana Fugu is our orchestration model, trained with reinforcement learning to route multi-step tasks across a variety of underlying LLMs. Namazu is our line of post-trained open-weight models tuned to reflect Japanese knowledge and values. The RSI Lab in Tokyo is dedicated to recursive self-improvement and AI-driven scientific discovery, continuing the work that began with The AI Scientist. And our co-founder Llion Jones keeps pushing on a longer-horizon goal of moving beyond the Transformer architecture itself. Asked at the end what one thing he would change about Japan, David’s answer was “hope.” “To really move the needle in terms of innovation, like the era in Japan when you have companies like Sony or Panasonic come out, there are a few factors. One is that the nation needs to have a collective sense of hope. A nation needs to feel hopeful. It could be poor. Everyone can be dirt poor, but they have hope. And that hope leads to things being done. So, what creates hope in Japan? Is it more money? Is it less taxes? Or is it more benefits? Probably not. I think it’s stories and narratives. If I have a magic wand, if the population in Japan is more optimistic about the future of this country, suddenly they’re persuaded, to be more optimistic. People should be optimistic. With optimism comes change. And change leads to more optimism.” Listen to the full episode: 🎏

StrayKids World Tour <RUN IT JAPAN> スキズ チケット 交換 【譲】9/5 （土） 名古屋 2枚 【求】9/6（日） 名古屋 　2枚 ※9/6以外のチケットでも検討いたします ️⭕️アプグレ対応、個人情報交換可 お心当たりのある方いらっしゃいましたら、DMにてご連絡をお願いいたします🙇🏻‍♀️

Stray Kids、新曲『RUN IT』でグローバルチャート席巻 ▼壮大な世界観のMVにも反響続々！ #StrayKids# #스트레이키즈# #スキズ#

Stray Kids、国立競技場でのライブ開催決定✨ 海外男性アーティスト史上初の快挙🎊 🔻ドーム公演含む7公演決定 #StrayKids　##RUN_IT_JAPAN#

雪葬❄️ パトロンさんになるとBETA版が遊べます🥰 今回、誰でも遊べるくらい軽くしました！ Become a patron to play the Snowed Under beta! 💜 This time, we’ve optimized it so most anyone can run it!