CoWoS, an unpopular technology 10 years ago, TSMC firmly dominates the AI chip market
yahoo! news
December 06, 2024
Author: Global Central Magazine reporter Zhang Jianzhong
December 06, 2024
Author: Global Central Magazine reporter Zhang Jianzhong
CoWoS seems to be the hottest semiconductor technology in recent years. TSMC Senior Vice General Manager and Deputy Co-Chief Operating Officer Zhang Xiaoqiang said at this year’s TSMC Hsinchu Field Technology Forum, “If you have never heard of CoWoS, you must be an alien.”
Text/Zhang Jianzhong (reporter of Central News Agency)
TSMC leads the world in process technology, accounting for 90% of the advanced process market share; and the advanced process and CoWoS advanced packaging technology have allowed TSMC to almost dominate the world's artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator market. It is obvious that CoWoS is TSMC's largest Taking advantage of AI business opportunities is a key to achieving record-breaking operations.
Three-nanometer and five-nanometer advanced processes are the driving force behind TSMC’s operational growth
With the popularity of ChatGPT launched by OpenAI, AI applications have expanded rapidly in recent years. Cloud service providers such as Microsoft and Google have invested heavily in AI infrastructure. NVIDIA, the leading AI chip manufacturer, is the biggest beneficiary, and its performance has surged. , the stock price and market value soared, surpassing Apple several times, and the market value ranking ranked first in the world.
TSMC is the OEM of Huida and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) AI chips. Despite the continued weak market demand for computers and mobile phones, it has still delivered impressive results. Since the second quarter of this year, its revenue has hit new highs quarter by quarter, and its profits have also increased. Set a new record in the third quarter.
The 3-nanometer and 5-nanometer processes are the main source of TSMC's revenue and the main driver of operational growth, accounting for more than 50% of revenue in total: 3-nanometer revenue in the first half of the year reached NT$135.5 billion, exceeding last year's NT$108 billion ; 5-nanometer’s revenue in the first half of the year exceeded 400 billion yuan, a significant increase of more than 130 billion yuan compared with the same period last year.
CoWoS connects customer growth, triples production capacity but still exceeds supply
TSMC's CoWoS revenue scale is far less than that of advanced processes, accounting for less than 10%; however, the supply of CoWoS is related to the growth of customers, which will also affect TSMC's wafer sales and performance. TSMC Chairman and President Wei Zhejia has stated many times that TSMC works very hard to satisfy customers.
Wei Zhejia said that customer demand far exceeds supply. Although TSMC has more than tripled its CoWoS production capacity this year, demand still exceeds supply. TSMC will fully respond to customer demand for CoWoS advanced packaging production capacity.
TSMC’s advanced packaging and testing factory five in Zhongke was built last year and is expected to mass-produce CoWoS next year; its advanced packaging and testing factory seven in Chiayi is expected to be built this year and mass-produce CoWoS and system integration single-chip (SoIC) in 2026. TSMC plans that the compound annual growth rate of CoWoS advanced packaging production capacity will exceed 60% from 2022 to 2026.
TSMC also cooperates with professional packaging and testing foundry (OSAT) partners. In October, it signed a memorandum of cooperation with Amkor to expand its partnership. Amkor plans to build a new factory in Peoria, Arizona, USA. TSMC will use the one-stop advanced packaging and testing provided by the new factory. services and support customers, especially those who produce chips through TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facility in Phoenix.
Semiconductor packaging and testing factory ASE Investment Control and its subsidiary Silicon Products are also aggressively deploying advanced packaging. Among them, Silicon Products spent 419 million yuan in October to obtain the land use rights of Zhongke Changhua Erlin Park from the Central Science Park Administration and spent 3.702 billion yuan. Acquired the Yunlin Douliu factory from Minghui Energy to expand CoWoS advanced packaging production capacity.
ASE Investment Controls works closely with TSMC in advanced packaging. Investments include CoWoS front-end wafer processing and advanced testing. This year's advanced packaging and testing performance will exceed US$500 million, and next year's performance is expected to grow by more than 10% compared with this year. In addition, wafer testing factory KYEC has also significantly expanded its wafer testing capacity after CoWoS advanced packaging.
As TSMC and packaging and testing factories actively invest in expanding production, the market expects that the operations of semiconductor equipment factories are expected to benefit, including Hongsu, Xinyun and Wanrun. With the pursuit of market funds, their stock prices doubled last year and this year for two consecutive years. As a result, Hongsu not only ranked among the top stocks, but reached a maximum of 2,140 yuan.
AI's booming demand has pushed CoWoS into a popular semiconductor technology
CoWoS seems to be the hottest semiconductor technology in recent years. TSMC Senior Vice General Manager and Deputy Co-Chief Operating Officer Zhang Xiaoqiang said at this year’s TSMC Hsinchu Field Technology Forum, “If you have never heard of CoWoS, you must be an alien.” One sentence expresses the popularity of CoWoS.
In fact, TSMC's CoWoS advanced packaging technology has been in mass production for more than 10 years. Until recent years, AI demand has driven up the demand for CoWoS and there has been a serious shortage of production capacity. Zhang Xiaoqiang said that CoWoS is very important for integrating advanced logic chips and high bandwidth memory (HBM).
CoWoS is mainly divided into two parts: CoW (Chip-on-Wafer) wafer stacking and WoS (Wafer-on-Substrate) wafer stacking on the substrate, which means stacking the wafers and then packaging them on the substrate. According to the way the wafers are arranged, Eventually, 2.5D and 3D forms were formed to save chip space, reduce power consumption and cost.
Chips made with CoWoS advanced packaging technology have high performance and low power consumption, making them the first choice for AI chips. CoWoS is also widely used in fields such as high-performance computing (HPC), 5G, Internet of Things, and automotive electronics.
While TSMC is actively expanding CoWoS production capacity, it also plans to significantly expand SoIC production capacity. The compound annual growth rate of SoIC production capacity from 2022 to 2026 will exceed 100%.
Zhang Xiaoqiang said that in the future, TSMC will not only provide customers with the most advanced transistor technology, but also provide customers with a more advanced system-level integration platform to improve performance and speed. Use a 3D integration platform to increase computing power density, allowing more operations to be performed per unit area, and promoting wider application of AI and HPC.
TSMC continues to challenge the limits of process shrinkage, providing smaller and more energy-efficient transistors for a single chip. It hopes to integrate more than 200 billion transistors on a single chip and reach more than 1 trillion transistors through 3D packaging.
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