PLAB's financial report is tomorrow, and this is a company that sells water for those who sell water. Any chip, from design to manufacturing, must first complete a step—creating a photomask. The general process is: Chip design → Photomask → Lithography → Wafer manufacturing → Packaging → AI servers. However, PLAB's real battlefield is not advanced processes but mature processes (28nm–90nm). It's not about GPUs, but a whole set of supporting chips that run around AI: Power management chips Network switching and interface chips Retimer / DSP SmartNIC Control and sensor chips Optical communication driver chips Almost all of these operate on mature nodes. In other words: AI does not just add a stronger chip, but adds dozens of supporting chips. And each type of chip requires a new mask. The changes brought by AI: not just process upgrades, but an explosion in the design of the entire ecosystem. The result is: The number of tape-outs is increasing, and PLAB's revenue essentially depends on the number of tape-outs. Additionally, CPO will also become a long-term positive factor, as its significance is not just the upgrade of optical modules, but the addition of a new type of chip: photonic chips (Silicon Photonics). ...