SEMI and TechSearch International map advanced packaging growth ... - eeNews Europe

SEMI and TechSearch International have released the 2026 Worldwide Assembly & Test Facility Database, covering over 820 semiconductor back-end manufacturing facilities globally. This expansion introdu... Read original →

Advanced packaging has shifted from a back-end afterthought to the linchpin of Moore’s Law extension. SEMI and TechSearch’s database expansion effectively integrates AI accelerators, photonic ICs, and compound semiconductors into a unified capacity-monitoring framework—signaling that backend manufacturing is now a new frontier in tech sovereignty. EDA and materials suppliers must urgently align with chiplet and silicon-photonics co-design flows, while cloud giants face looming CoWoS capacity shortages, as TSMC’s advanced packaging lines are already booked through 2027 by NVIDIA and AMD. Geopolitically, U.S. CHIPS Act funding is pivoting toward packaging, accelerating localized build-outs in Taiwan, China and mainland China—but high-end ABF substrates and TSV tools remain export-controlled. Over the next 18 months, OSATs mastering heterogeneous integration will dominate HPC supply chains, while IDMs without credible advanced packaging roadmaps risk strategic irrelevance.