Advanced IC substrate reach the stars

The ABF substrate market was about US$4.8 billion in 2021. The top five players, namely, Ibiden, Unimicron, NYPCB, Shinko, and AT&S, are responsible for almost 75% of the total market by surface area. And Kinsus, SEMCO, Access, Daeduck, Toppan, and Kyocera made up the rest of the market…
Yole Intelligence, part of Yole Group, has developed comprehensive and in-depth semiconductor packaging expertise for over 20 years. Throughout the year, analysts investigate this industry and deliver their findings in an extensive collection of technology & market analyses with reports, monitors, and teardowns.

In this context, Yole Intelligence releases its annual report, Status of the Advanced IC Substrate Industry 2022. This 2022 edition focuses on three advanced IC substrate platforms, advanced IC substrate, circuit board SLP , and ED . It delivers an overview of market trends, forecasts, technology roadmaps, and supply chains for each substrate platform. It also gives an overview of Chinese IC substrate makers and how they affect the market.

• IC substrates are mainly driven by AP , baseband for FC CSP and 5G wireless devices, HPC , GPUs , servers, and the automotive industry for FC BGA . The market value is expected to have a 12% CAGR from US$12.6 billion in 2021 to US$24.3 billion in 2027.
• SLP circuit boards are mainly used in high-end smartphones, with US$3 billion in revenue in 2021 and a CAGR of 6.7% to US$4.3 billion by 2027.
• ED in laminate substrate is relatively new to the market but will have a CAGR of 39%, reaching $1.0 billion in 2027 from $142 million in 2021.
The main substrate technology trends are increasing complexity with larger areas, more layers and finer pitches, and reducing line/width spacing (L/S) by adopting approaches like SAP , mSAP , or amSAP . SLP technology developments remained steady in recent years, while ED technology aims to enable embedding multiple dies to serve more applications.

The IC substrate market is optimistic, especially in FC BGA with ABF substrate. Companies announced unprecedented investment and capacity expansion in 2021 and 2022, exceeding $US15.5 billion. More investments are in Asia, with almost 46% in China. AT&S in Austria is the biggest investor, focusing on FC BGA, aiming to become a top three IC substrate supplier soon. The investments have not come entirely from companies but also partially from their customers, who are co-investing with substrate players to ensure their supply. In these cases, capacity is allocated to those customers that invested, so the increased capacity does not help smaller customers.

Yole Intelligence’s semiconductor packaging team invites you to follow this industry at www.yolegroup.com. Stay tuned!