Major global substrate companies including Samsung Electro-Mechanics are actively responding to the demand for artificial intelligence, which is expected to grow rapidly in the future. While continuing to secure IT equipment and data center chipset customers, we are also actively investing in facilities to expand production capacity.

Industry insiders said on the 1st that in the second half of this year, several semiconductor substrate companies have successively built new semiconductor substrate production lines.

AMD & Cloud Service Provider Cooperation

Following AMD, Samsung Electro-Mechanics is seeking to provide FC-BGA for AI servers in cooperation with multiple CSPs (cloud service providers) around the world. FC-BGA is a package substrate that uses "flip chip bumps" (a method of flipping chips) to connect semiconductor chips and substrates. Compared with wire bonding, which is mainly used for existing packages, it has the advantage of higher electrical and thermal characteristics.

Currently, Samsung Electro-Mechanics is producing FC-BGA for servers in Busan and Vietnam. In particular, the Vietnam FC-BGA plant, which has decided to invest a total of 1.9 trillion won, has started mass production in June and is currently busy preparing for expansion.

In addition, Samsung Electro-Mechanics has been expanding a new FC-BGA production line at its Sejong plant since the second half of last year. The goal is to complete it in the second half of this year. The investment is aimed at responding to new AP (application processor) products for AI PCs from global IT companies, and is expected to further improve the performance and yield of FC-BGA.

Major competitor Ibiden of Japan is also expected to accelerate facility investment based on the positive outlook of the AI industry. Eviden is the main substrate supplier of NVIDIA, which leads the AI semiconductor market.

New FC-BGA production line

Currently, Ibiden is building a new FC-BGA production line in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, at a total cost of 250 billion yen (about 2.3 trillion won). It is planned to start production at 25% of the total capacity by the end of next year and expand capacity to 50% in the first quarter of 2026.

Ibiden CEO Koji Kawashima said in an interview with Bloomberg on the 30th that "customers have expressed concerns that the new line operation plan is not sufficient" and "we are already asking questions about future investment and capacity expansion." He said.

Taiwan Xinxing Electronics also held a board meeting on the 17th of this month and decided to issue convertible bonds worth 15 billion yuan (about 3 trillion won). The purpose of financing is to build a new factory.

Industry analysts believe that Xinxing Technology plans to expand the production capacity of AI server HDI (high-density interconnect board) through this factory. This is because Xinxing Microelectronics also supplies high-performance motherboards to NVIDIA. HDI is a board that implements more sophisticated circuits than existing PCBs (printed circuit boards) and is widely used in small IT equipment and AI servers.

Source: Content compiled from zdnet

View more at EASELINK