In the 1980s, Zhang Zhongmou, who left from IT, took away advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology, but few people noticed that Zhang Zhongmou took away from the United States, and indirectly included materials, including the entire back-end sealing and testing link - although this transfer began earlier.
Compared with the wafer manufacturing link with a gross profit of up to 50%, it is usually difficult for the packaging and testing link to exceed the gross profit of 20%, which is the root cause of this neglect. This has led to the outbreak of the epidemic black swan and the supply chain crisis sweeping the world, Americans will still focus most of their attention on the return of wafer foundry, in order to attract TSMC, Samsung back to the United States to set up factories.
However, the situation has quietly changed since TSMC created the concept of "advanced packaging": on the one hand, advanced packaging is doubling the value of wafers in traditional packaging, on the other hand, Moore's Law bottlenecks and data center, high-performance computing demand has risen, so that packaging plays an increasingly critical role in chip performance, and the largest demand side is concentrated in the United States.
Judging from the footsteps of TSMC and Samsung, whether voluntarily or by force, it is an established fact that advanced manufacturing will be brought back to the United States by building factories, but the advanced packaging that is crucial for advanced processes below 7nm is far from being ashore. The lack of advanced packaging will further frustrate the good wishes of the US supply chain localization.
The despised chip packaging test is extended by the US supply chain
Semiconductor packaging and testing shifted from the United States to Asia earlier than manufacturing. As early as 1968, South Korean Kim Ju-jin established Alkor Electronics in the United States, marking the official independence of the packaging and testing process from the IDM model. This company later became the packaging and testing giant we know as Alkor Technology.
The identity of "Korean American" seems to be some kind of foreshadowing. In the decades that followed, while Ann was dominating the global semiconductor packaging and testing, this link was also accelerating to markets with lower labor costs, including China, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. One obvious proof is that Anne has not even owned a single U.S. factory until now.
This is not difficult to understand, the division of labor in the industrial chain is often driven by lower costs and higher profits, just like the manufacturing links that were later handed over by the United States, and the packaging and testing with lower profit margins bore the brunt at the beginning of the division of labor. Labor-intensive was an important feature of the packaging and testing industry at that time, which forced AMERICAN chip manufacturers to consider divesting related businesses.
As a result, in addition to Intel, TI, etc. retaining part of the packaging and testing capacity, most of the Us chip factories have accepted the fact that their chips have to be transferred overseas for packaging, which is insignificant under the promotion of supply chain globalization and the substantial increase in gross profits, and Taiwan, which has taken over the manufacturing industry, has also taken over the banner of packaging and testing under the historical trend.
In 2003, Riyueguang replaced Anky to become the world's largest packaging and testing factory, announcing that Taiwan had become another global semiconductor packaging and testing center. In the decades since, the gap between the United States and Asia in the closed test link has been repeatedly widened.
According to IPC Trade Organization and TechSearch International's North American Semiconductor and Advanced Packaging Ecosystem Analysis, North America accounts for only 3% of global packaging production. According to the ATREG report, in 2019, Chinese mainland has the largest number of packaging plants (114), followed by Taiwan (106), the rest of the Asia-Pacific region (65), North America (35) and so on.
On the left is the market share of the United States in the three major links; source: U.S. Department of Defense
Jan Vardaman, president of TechSearch, and Matt Kelly, chief technical expert at IPC, said, "There are more than 25 OSAT in the U.S., but they lack the capacity to meet the growing demand. The "card neck" of packaging and testing capacity caused by the epidemic in Southeast Asia has proved that for a long time, American chip companies will continue to rely on Asia's packaging and testing capacity.
However, for this gap, the United States was almost indifferent, and even until September 2020, SIA and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released a heavyweight report, "Government Incentive Programs and the Competitiveness of American Semiconductor Manufacturing", which did not "take the packaging and testing process into account". This arrogance may make the US sealing and testing industry the next manufacturing industry.
As the North American Semiconductor and Advanced Packaging Ecosystem Analysis points out, the United States lacks large-scale packaging production capacity, substrate and wafer bump services. Amranex, Intel, and other U.S. companies are addressing these issues, but there are some challenges. With the growing importance of advanced packaging throughout the semiconductor industry, this puts the United States in a precarious position.
"The failure to strengthen U.S. advanced packaging capabilities while increasing chip production will extend existing semiconductor supply chains as manufacturers will be forced to send chips abroad for packaging and assembly." Vardaman and Kelly said.
The incremental value of advanced packaging is thickened The three major technical routes are completely backward
It has to be said that TSMC's impact on the global semiconductor industry is "domino", in addition to accelerating the transfer of the sealing and testing industry, its continuous exploration of advanced processes has also spawned the concept of "advanced packaging", which is shaking the industry. It is also the importance of advanced packaging in high-end chip manufacturing that has made the US semiconductor industry wary again.
According to Yole's forecast, the advanced packaging market revenue will double to $47.5 billion from 2014 to 2026, with a CAGR of 7.4% during the period, of which Flip-Chip will continue to account for the vast majority of the share (72%), 3D/2.5D stacking and Fan-Out will increase by 22% and 16%, respectively, and the adoption rate of various applications will continue to increase.
Image source: YOLE
Brad Ferguson, senior vice president and general manager of SkyWater, the sole pure foundry in the United States, believes that advanced packaging will be the entry point for the United States to bring back the sealing and testing industry. "The vision of onshore packaging has emerged in the internal narrative of the U.S. Department of Defense, and commercial customers have a strong desire to bring the packaging test back to their home countries."
In fact, as the main producer of high-end chips, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc. can be said to have single-handedly promoted the rapid development of advanced packaging. To advance chip design, each generation of ASICs needs to integrate more features. This becomes even more challenging as nodes advance. This makes advanced packaging the latest battleground for high-end chips after ASICs.
Jiwei Network quoted industry insiders in ""Misunderstood" advanced packaging, Chinese mainland has just started" to reveal that almost all high-end AI chips in TSMC will choose CoWoS technology. Looking to the future, chiplet's future trend will create a bigger stage for advanced packaging.
Specifically from the perspective of Flip-Chip (FC), 3D/2.5D packaging, Fan-Out and several advanced packaging technologies, the gap between the United States and key regions is not small. Among them, FC is used in the packaging technology commonly used in smartphone chips such as BGA, occupying most of the advanced packaging market, but its production capacity is overwhelmingly concentrated in Asia.
The manufacture of FC chips first requires the formation of a copper bump or copper column on top of the chip, and then the chip is flipped over and mounted on a separate mold or carrier plate, and the raised part falls on the copper pad to form an electrical connection. According to the "North American Semiconductor and Advanced Packaging Ecosystem Analysis", although the US manufacturers have bump technology, they lack production capacity, and the current production capacity accounts for only 6.5% of the world.
FC Manufacturing Process; Image Source: Anysilicon
Fan-Out is considered to be the most growing process in wafer-level packaging, providing more I/O number at process nodes below 28nm, and is trending in ic applications with higher complexity such as computing chips. However, TSMC once again went global with a share of 66.9%, followed by Riyueguang and Changdian Technology, while the American "single seedling" An reliance ranked fourth with only 3%.
3D/2.5D packaging and Chiplet may be the smallest gap track in the United States, which must be attributed to the foresight of Intel to retain part of the packaging and testing capacity, at present, Intel and TSMC, Samsung, has mature 2.5D packaging experience, 3D package Coveros has also begun mass production, with the return of the foundry business, is expected to promote its investment in this field.
However, even so, Intel's competitive relationship with AMD and Nvidia makes it more difficult for the already rare capacity to meet the overall demand, such as AMD's first 3D Chiplet data center CPU handed over to TSMC for production, and with the expansion of Tongfu Microelectric FC production capacity, in view of the deep binding relationship with AMD, these orders may also fall more in Asia.
Materials, Equipment, Labor The United States needs more than just chip laws
Everything always has a price, just like Asia even in the rise of foundries under the unique advantages, it took a while to form a huge packaging and testing industry chain, the United States decades of indifference, so that the return of the packaging and testing industry will become a lengthy and slow process. Even if the low-end closed test of exchanging cheap labor for profits is abandoned, the advanced package will not be the cake that the United States wants to eat.
The first is the material issue. The Analysis of The Semiconductor and Advanced Packaging Ecosystem in North America points out that the lack of IC carrier board manufacturing is the biggest problem found in the study. The U.S. has little capacity to produce state-of-the-art IC carrier boards, such as ABF carrier boards and BT carrier boards for FC-BGA and FC-CSP packages(mostly used for ASICs for high-end GPU, CPU, and HPC applications).
The IC carrier board market is highly concentrated, and the top ten suppliers are from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, covering 80% of the market. ABF carrier boards are expensive to manufacture, including an investment of about $1 billion per plant and need to address technology gaps that have been left behind for more than 20 years, inadequate secondary supply, skilled labor (1,000 workers/facilities) and raw material shortages.
In fact, the abf carrier board production capacity shortage has been going on for a long time, and the industry predicts that the situation will be difficult to improve by 2023, including Intel, AMD, Nvidia including the largest demand for ABF carrier boardSychild in the United States chip manufacturers have to take extraordinary measures, signing a long order, Intel even proposed to increase the expansion subsidy for supplier Xinxing Electronics.
The report pointed out that it is pointless to increase the capacity of the US packaging and testing plant without increasing the supply of IC carrier boards, because this does not essentially shorten the supply chain, "If the United States wants to spend $25 billion on semiconductors, then it should spend at least $1 billion on IC carrier boards to establish world-class manufacturing facilities." ”
The second is the device issue. The author observes that even with test equipment leaders such as Teradyne, the United States has a big gap with Japanese and European manufacturers in packaging equipment, and ASM Pacific, K&S, Besi, Disco, Towa, Yamada and other companies occupy most of the packaging equipment market.
However, the author previously learned from the senior management of a certain equipment manufacturer in the industry that advanced packaging uses more front-end manufacturing methods to make back-channel connection circuits, and the use of equipment is roughly the same, such as 2.5D/3D packaging TSV technology requires lithography machines, glued eyeshadow equipment, wet etching equipment, etc., which also provides an opportunity for American manufacturers who have advantages in the field of front-end equipment.
Finally, there is the old and most vulnerable labor problem in the United States. Kevin Engel, vice president of Amco's Flip Chip/Wafer Services business unit, said that as the supply chain deepens, labor costs and the availability of skilled workers become more challenging. "Packaging and some material lines require a high labor content, increasing the cost gap with Asia."
The North American Semiconductor and Advanced Packaging Ecosystem Analysis argues that addressing workforce demand requires a more urgent, broad, and sustained partnership between federal, state, and local governments, educational institutions, and the private sector. For example, in 2015, aim Photonics was established in the United States to provide the fabrication, packaging and testing of silicon photons. Amco Technologies also said it is working with organizations and universities to identify solutions.
Still, for the United States, relying on government power sounds increasingly like a slogan. The U.S. government is clearly aware of the importance of advanced packaging, and the chip bill clearly mentions that from 2021 to 2025, $30 million will be invested annually for advanced testing, assembly and packaging capabilities. But with the repeated postponement of the bill, manufacturers may have to think of another way.
Write at the end
If the successful promotion of TSMC, Samsung and other foundry giants to build factories in the United States has allowed the industry to see the determination of the United States to revitalize chip manufacturing, then let go of arrogance and face up to the chip packaging and testing that has been underestimated, so that the potential intention of the United States to rebuild a complete local supply chain is truly clear.
But this road may be more difficult than "coercing" TSMC to build a factory in the United States, whether it is TSMC or Samsung, there is no plan to bring advanced packaging to American soil for the time being, and the "only hope" of the US packaging and testing plant is safe, although it declares that it will build the first American factory, it still emphasizes that it will depend on the incentives of the bill.
The future of advanced packaging is fast approaching, but the U.S. may have missed the first opportunities to get on board, just as it once lost on advanced manufacturing. (Proofreading/Hidden Drei)