UMC. Photo courtesy of UMC
UMC (2303) has won a large order for Qualcomm High-Speed Computing (HPC) advanced packaging, which will be used in AI PCs, automotive, and the now hot AI server market, and even high-bandwidth memory (HBM) integration. UMC not only ushered in new momentum in performance but also broke the trend that the advanced packaging market was exclusively controlled by TSMC (2330).
UMC does not respond to a single customer, emphasizing that advanced packaging is the focus of the company's active development, and will work with subsidiaries such as Faraday and Silicone, as well as memory supply partner Winbond, to jointly build an advanced packaging ecosystem.
UMC has deployed advanced packaging, and currently only supplies the interposer at the process end, which is used in the RFSOI process, and its contribution to revenue is quite limited. All of the world's advanced packaging process business is still controlled by TSMC, and with Qualcomm's intention to use UMC's advanced packaging process to build high-speed computing (HPC) chips, it is equivalent to opening up new business for UMC and breaking the situation that the advanced packaging market is exclusively controlled by TSMC.
UMC's advanced packaging layout
According to people familiar with the matter, UMC won a large order for Qualcomm advanced packaging, and the relevant details are that Qualcomm formally entrusts TSMC advanced process mass production with the core of semi-customized Oryon architecture, and then entrusts the wafer to UMC for advanced packaging, which is expected to use UMC's WoW Hybrid bonding (hybrid bonding) process, which means that UMC has fully stepped into the advanced packaging market.
According to industry analysis, in order to expand the AI PC, automotive and server markets, Qualcomm will adopt UMC's advanced packaging wafer stacking technology, and will combine PoP packaging to replace the traditional packaging mode of solder ball soldering in the past, so that the signal transmission distance between chips is closer, so as to achieve the purpose of improving the computing performance of chips without the need to improve the wafer manufacturing process.
The legal person pointed out that the most critical process of advanced packaging is the intermediate layer that needs to be exposed to the manufacturing of the machine, coupled with the silicon perforation that requires ultra-high precision, so that the chip signals stacked by 2.5D or 3D advanced packaging can be connected with each other, and UMC has the equipment to produce the intermediate layer, and has applied the TSV process to the order of ultra-micro GPU chips as early as ten years ago, which means that UMC fully has the prerequisite for the mass production technology of the advanced packaging process, which has become the main reason for Qualcomm's favor.
The industry believes that Qualcomm's new high-speed computing chips built with UMC's advanced packaging process are expected to start trial production in the second half of 2025 and enter the mass shipment stage in 2026.
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