People at the Computex 2025 visit Taipei in May. – I-HWA Cheng/AFP/Getty Images
The Taiwanese semiconductor production company has unveiled the $ 100 billion investment in the US history, drawing global attention and promoting concern in Taiwan.
TSMC, which produces more than 90% of the advanced world semiconductor chips, which feed everything from smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI) applications to weapons, will create two new advanced packaging devices in Arizona.
Here is all you need to know about advanced packaging technologies that have noticed the growth of exponential demand along with the global flair and what it means to the US and China’s struggle for AI dominance.
Although both parties have announced a temporary ceasefire, which caused a 90 -day destructive three -digit tariffs, the relationship remains strained due to the constant restrictions on the chips set by the US and other issues.
Last month, Computex, the annual Taipei exhibition Computex, due to Ai Boom, CEO of Chipmaker NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, told reporters that “the importance of advanced packaging is very high,” says “the package is no more difficult than me”.
The packaging usually means one of the semiconductor shavings processes, which means that the chip to close the protective body inside and attached to the motherboard, which enters the electronic device.
The advanced packaging, specifically, refers to methods that allow more chips such as graphic processing blocks (GPU), central processing devices (CPU) or large bandwidth memory (HBM), must be closer, resulting in better performance, faster data transmission and lower power consumption.
Think about these chips as different sections of the company. The closer these sections are with each other, the easier and less time it takes to allow people to travel between them and the exchange idea, and the more effective the operation becomes.
“You are trying to put the chips as close to each other as possible, and you also make a variety of solutions to make it a very easy connection between chips,” Dan Nystet, Vice President of the Private Investment Company Triorient, told CNN.
In a sense, advanced packaging supports the Moore law, the idea that the number of microchip transistors would double every two years as the outbreaks of the chips are becoming more expensive and heavier.
While there are many types of advanced packaging technologies, Cowos, briefly dedicated to Chips-On-Wafer-On-Substrate and TSMC, is undoubtedly the most known, which has been thrown away from the debut of the Openai’s Chatgpt.
In Taiwan, it even became a domestic name that encouraged Lisa with the Advanced Micro device (AMD) manager, to say that the island is the “only place you can say Cowos and everyone understand”.
Advanced packaging has become a big thing in the technology world as it provides AI programs that require a lot of complex computing, immediate or flaws.
Cowos is a must in the manufacture of AI processors such as NVIDIA and AMD manufactured by GPUs, which are used in AI servers or data centers.
“If you want, you can call it a NVIDIA packing process. Almost anyone using AI chips uses the Cowos process, ”said Nysteted.
That is why the demand for Cowos technology has increased. As a result, TSMC tries to increase production capacity.
January While visiting Taiwan, Huang told reporters that the current number of advanced packaging capacity was “probably four times”, which was less than two years ago.
“Packaging technology is very important for the future of calculation,” he said. “We now need to have a very complex advanced packaging to put a lot of chips in one giant chip.”
If advanced cooking is a single piece of puzzle, when it comes to making chips, the improved packaging is different.
Analysts say that both pieces of that puzzle in Arizona mean that the US will have a one -stop shop for chips for making chips, and a strengthened position on their Arsenal, benefit Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm and Broadcom, some of the best SMC customers.
“This ensures that the US has a full supply chain from advanced production to the most advanced packaging, which would be useful for US competitiveness in AI chips,” Eric Cen, an analyst at Digitimes Research, told CNN.
People at the Computex 2025 visit Taipei in May. – I-HWA Cheng/AFP/Getty Images
As the Advanced Packaging Technologies key is currently being produced in Taiwan, in Arizona also reduces the potential risk of supply chain.
“Instead of having all the eggs in one bag, Cowos would be in Taiwan and the US, which makes you feel safer and safer,” said Nystedt.
Although Cowos has recently received its moment, this technology actually existed for at least 15 years.
It was a brain of engineers led by Chiang Shang-Yi, who had served two TSMC and retired from the company as its chief management officer.
Chiang first offered to develop technologies in 2009, trying to more adapt the transistors to chips and solve productivity obstacles.
However, when it was created, only a few companies have taken technology due to the high costs of it.
“I had only one client … I really became a joke (in the company) and I had so much pressure,” he recalled in 2022. In a design project captured by the Mountain View, California in Mountain View, Mountain Museum.
However, the Ai boom was turning Cowos, making it one of the most popular technologies. “The result is not in our primary expectations,” Chiang said.
In the global semiconductor supply chain, companies specializing in packaging and test services are called external semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) companies.
In addition to TSMC, South Korea’s Samsung and America’s Intel, as well as OSAT firms, including the Chinese Jcet group, America’s Amkor and Taiwan ASE Group and Spil, are all major participants in advanced packaging technologies.
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