From machine vision and semiconductor materials to RISC-V, FPGA developer ecosystems, and an AI-EDA startup spun out of Tsinghua UniversityI spent a day walking through CIOE and elexcon 2026 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center in Bao’an.
CIOE covers optics and photonics on an enormous scale: cameras, lenses, displays, lasers, sensors, machine vision, and the manufacturing equipment built around them. At the same time, other halls were filled with semiconductor manufacturing, embedded systems, electronic components, and development platforms. I started in Hall 1 with optics and smart manufacturing, moved through the semiconductor manufacturing exhibition in Hall 14, and eventually reached elexcon in Hall 16.https://medium.com/media/5e93dde6443ef71bba610cfa2d73700f/hrefI have lived in Shenzhen for years and have visited many Chinese electronics exhibitions. What interested me this time was not simply that there were more Chinese companies. The bigger change was that the range of industries represented has expanded, while individual fields have become much more specialized.
China’s semiconductor industry is often discussed through “self-sufficiency,” export controls, or US-China competition. Walking through the exhibition, however, shows another dimension: companies are appearing across more layers of the industrial stack — manufacturing equipment, materials, chip design, finished semiconductors, development tools, and applications.
▶ 00:00 — Entering CIOE / elexcon 2026 ▶ 04:40 — The scale of the Shenzhen exhibition centerThe World’s Factory Is Also a Market for Factory UpgradesHall 1 was packed with companies working on cameras, lenses, CMOS sensors, image processing, and visual inspection. Some make individual optical components or camera modules; others integrate them into complete inspection systems. Nearby were machines for automated soldering, assembly, and wire bonding. International companies such as Keysight were present as well, so this was by no means an ecosystem consisting only of Chinese suppliers.
Sunny Optical was a good example of how broad this supply chain has become. Its displays covered optical components for AR and XR glasses, compact projection systems, RGB cameras, and dToF depth sensors.
▶ 01:00 — Cameras, optics, and smart manufacturing ▶ 03:00 — Automated inspection and manufacturing equipment ▶ 03:28 — Sunny Optical and AR/XR optics
China has an enormous manufacturing base, and those factories are themselves a huge technology market. When a factory automates inspection or improves quality control, it needs cameras, sensors, processors, AI inference, controllers, and software. A visual-inspection system connects optics and imaging to semiconductors, algorithms, and production equipment.
This is an important part of what “the world’s factory” means today. China does not only manufacture products for overseas markets. Its own factories continuously generate demand for the technologies required to upgrade manufacturing.Beyond Chips: Equipment and MaterialsHall 14 focused more directly on semiconductor manufacturing. Near the entrance was HDSC, showing Chinese MCUs and applications such as smart meters, display control, and smart-home systems. Midea Group’s MR Semiconductor was also there.
Midea is known internationally for home appliances, but the group also owns KUKA and has substantial industrial robotics operations. Its semiconductor activities therefore extend into motor control, high-current applications, industrial systems, and automotive electronics.
▶ 05:45 — Entering the semiconductor manufacturing exhibition ▶ 05:58 — HDSC and Chinese MCUs ▶ 06:25 — Midea Group’s MR Semiconductor
Chinese chip companies themselves are not new. What was more noticeable this year was the visibility of companies specializing in manufacturing equipment and materials. Companies selling composite materials and other highly specialized inputs had their own booths and were meeting customers directly.
Semiconductor materials and manufacturing equipment are areas where Japanese companies have historically been strong. The presence of Chinese suppliers at an exhibition does not mean that they have suddenly reached the same technological level as the strongest Japanese, American, or European companies. But the market structure is changing: there are more domestic suppliers attempting to serve these layers, and more customers actively looking for them.
▶ 12:10 — The growing breadth and depth of the semiconductor industry ▶ 12:38 — Semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials ▶ 12:50 — From manufacturing and materials to design, chips, and applications
For me, this is more useful than asking whether semiconductor localization is simply “complete” or “incomplete.” Industrial capabilities accumulate layer by layer.RISC-V Is Moving Across AI, Servers, and AutomotiveI spent a significant part of the day around the RISC-V exhibits. The interesting thing was that companies were no longer spending much time explaining RISC-V itself. They were showing what they were building with it.
Suzhou-based C*CORE showed systems combining RISC-V CPUs and NPUs, including boards capable of running Linux. Other companies were presenting AI processors with 9 TOPS, 16 TOPS, and higher performance. Server-oriented companies showed large multi-core RISC-V processors combined with AI accelerator cards.
▶ 07:20 — Entering the RISC-V area ▶ 07:31 — C*CORE: RISC-V + AI ▶ 08:40 — Discussing open-source AI chips ▶ 09:30 — RISC-V server systems
Shanghai-based CHIPV showed automotive RISC-V, including control hardware for functions such as speedometers and indicators. This is very different from competing on TOPS, but automotive controllers are produced in huge numbers, making this another important route for RISC-V adoption.
▶ 10:11 — Automotive RISC-V in operation
Alibaba’s T-Head ecosystem around Xuantie was also prominent. What matters here is not only the CPU core, but the surrounding IP, toolchains, programming environments, and development infrastructure.
An open instruction set alone does not make a commercial ecosystem. Companies need operating systems, libraries, debugging tools, boards, and engineers who know how to build products with the architecture. What I saw at elexcon suggests that the Chinese RISC-V ecosystem is increasingly moving into these implementation layers.
▶ 11:01 — Xuantie / T-Head ecosystemMore Than 300 FPGA Developer CoursesHall 16 was much closer to the electronics industry I work with regularly: finished MCUs, development boards, FPGA platforms, and embedded-development tools.
Around Allwinner, I saw boards for AI-camera applications and a demo where an Allwinner AI processor detected hand movements and used that information to control a robotic arm. STM32 handled part of the control system, while Allwinner silicon performed AI recognition.
That mixed architecture is itself worth noting. Real products are rarely organized according to simple narratives of “domestic” versus “foreign” technology.
▶ 14:33 — Allwinner ▶ 15:09 — AI hand recognition controlling a robotic arm
One company that particularly caught my attention was ALINX. Despite the name, it is not an FPGA manufacturer. It builds development boards and application solutions around Xilinx — now AMD — FPGAs, including automotive systems. It also works with Chinese FPGA devices such as those from Fudan Microelectronics.
▶ 16:09 — ALINX FPGA and automotive solutions ▶ 16:32 — Asking about its relationship with Xilinx
What interested me most was that ALINX has published more than 300 online courses teaching developers how to work with FPGA platforms.
▶ 17:12 — More than 300 developer courses
This relates closely to my own research on the developer-centric approach to hardware businesses.
Advanced semiconductors do not create markets simply by existing. Engineers need to know how to use them. That requires development boards, examples, tutorials, training, debugging environments, and technical support.
Structurally, this resembles what companies such as M5Stack have done around Espressif chips: a semiconductor platform becomes useful to a much larger population of developers because another layer of companies reduces the cost and difficulty of adoption.
When semiconductor industries are compared, most attention goes to fabrication technology or benchmark performance. Those are important, but there is another question I find equally interesting: who makes the technology usable?
Developer ecosystems are part of the industrial stack too.From a Tsinghua Research Paper to a Startup in Four MonthsThe booth where I spent the most time was developing an AI-based chip-design tool. Its system generates Verilog from prompts and uses multiple agents to work through design and testing processes.
The team had even created a promotional game called Understanding AI Chip Design, which Professor Junichi Akita of Kanazawa University tried at the booth.
▶ 18:35 — AI generating Verilog for chip design ▶ 18:49 — Prof. Junichi Akita tries the AI chip-design demo
During our conversation, I learned that the team had roots in Tsinghua University and was connected with the Yao Class. The project began as academic research. According to the team, it started with a paper, the university encouraged commercialization, they received funding, and the company itself had been established only around four months earlier.
They said they were already in discussions with roughly five companies.
▶ 18:59 — Interviewing the Tsinghua team ▶ 19:20 — How the multi-agent design system works ▶ 20:21 — From one research paper to a company ▶ 20:34 — Four months old and already talking with customers
None of this proves that the product is already a commercially competitive EDA system. A research paper, an exhibition demo, a stable product, and something that can be inserted into a semiconductor company’s real design flow are very different stages.
I asked Prof. Akita for his reaction. His answer was sensible: the objective and methodology looked reasonable, but there was no way to judge the actual performance without using it.
▶ 20:59 — Prof. Akita’s reaction
The more interesting observation for me was how quickly the research had moved into a commercial environment. A research project around generative AI and chip design became a company, received institutional support, appeared at an industry exhibition, and began talking with semiconductor customers within months.
That tells us something not only about AI or EDA, but about the mechanism connecting Chinese universities, startups, and industrial customers.Shenzhen Is No Longer Just a Fast-Prototyping StoryShenzhen Huaqiang Group was also exhibiting at elexcon. Huaqiangbei is internationally known for its giant electronics markets, but Huaqiang Group itself operates across semiconductor distribution, analog and power ICs, appliance design, IoT development, and OEM products.
▶ 13:43 — Shenzhen Huaqiang Group today
Seeing this alongside RISC-V CPU cores, FPGA developer platforms, semiconductor materials, and AI-assisted EDA makes it increasingly difficult to describe Shenzhen only as a place where you can buy components and quickly assemble a prototype.
That description was useful ten years ago. Some of it remains true. Shenzhen is still unusually good at connecting engineering, components, and manufacturing.
But after another decade of accumulation, the ecosystem now extends into more specialized layers.
When I first started writing about Shenzhen, explaining fast decision-making, rapid prototyping, and proximity to the supply chain was already enough to tell an interesting story about Chinese hardware.
I am less interested in repeating that story today.
I want to know what those companies accumulated after another ten years of engineering. Which activities that once depended heavily on imported expertise now support local companies? Where have developer ecosystems appeared? Which university research groups have produced startups? Which of those startups have found customers?
Toward the end of the day, the exhibition was still busy around specialized areas such as semiconductor materials, RISC-V, FPGA, and EDA.
▶ 21:54 — Walking the exhibition in its final hour
None of this means that China has achieved complete semiconductor self-sufficiency, or that every Chinese company at the show has world-class technology. Many of the systems I saw still relied on AMD, Xilinx, STM32, SEGGER, Keysight, and other international technologies.
But industrial development rarely happens as a clean transition from foreign to domestic.
What matters is whether the number of layers capable of sustaining companies, engineers, customers, and products continues to increase.
At elexcon / CIOE 2026, that accumulation was visible across materials, equipment, semiconductors, EDA, development platforms, engineering services, and applications.
No single chip on the exhibition floor suddenly changes the world.
The more important change is that the industrial structure around those chips keeps getting deeper.
▶ 22:29 — Closing thoughtsWatch the full field reportThe complete 22-minute video includes English and Chinese subtitles:
elexcon / CIOE 2026 — Full field report from Shenzhen
Originally developed from my field notes from Shenzhen and my longer Substack report.