Market and Technology Trends

Fan-Out WLP and PLP Applications and Technologies 2021

By Yole Intelligence — Jun 2021

TSMC’s Fan-Out success with Apple and high-performance computing are pushing Intel, Samsung, ASE, and all other competitors to find new innovative solutions.

What's new :

Market shares of manufacturers within each market class (UHD FO, HD FO, and Core FO) for 2020
Market shares of flip-chip vs. Fan-Out Packaging (AiP)
Market shares of IC substrate vs. Fan-Out Packaging (within smartphones)
More fabless & OEMs are engaged in UHD F
New players
New status updates of key players
UHD FO supply chain: what will drive the activity in the future?
New flavor of technologies available
Exciting developments leading to more technology breakthroughs

FAN-OUT PACKAGING MARKET GROWTH MAINLY DRIVEN BY UHD AND HD PRODUCTS

As part of advanced packaging, Fan-Out (FO) solutions have become critical and effective for foundries and IDMs, increasing device performance and bandwidth and reducing the gap between Si and substrate. OSATs are also following this trend, offering innovative Fan-Out packaging solutions that help solve front-end challenges with the slowing of Moore’s Law, resulting in bigger dies to improve performance. In the 2021 report, Yole Développement (Yole) shows that the FO packaging market is experiencing strong growth of 15.1% CAGR2020-2026, from $1,475M in 2020 to $3,425M by 2026. This is led by High-Density Fan-Out (HD FO) and Ultra-High-Density Fan-Out (UHD FO) – fueled by the adoption of high-performance applications. More specifically, in 2020, Fan-Out revenue was heavily dominated by APE applications for smartphones and smartwatches. In 2021, more revenue is expected from the UHD domain due to HPC applications for cloud infrastructure. 5G, autonomous driving, and the artificial intelligence revolution will shape the packaging trend of the next decade, with a denser multilayer RDL-build-up approach being one of the solutions helping to meet More-than-Moore requirements. UHD Fan-Out will play a key role and is, therefore, going to experience the fastest growth compared to the other Fan-Out categories. This report should help industry players to understand the evolution of the Fan-Out packaging market and technology, its roadmap, its importance, and its solutions for the next high-performance applications. It also describes what capabilities each FO platform is offering.

TSMC IS DOMINATING THE FO MARKET, BUT ASE AND OTHERS ARE CATCHING UP

TSMC is the FO market leader by revenue. This is attributed to the penetration of the inFO package into the APE for Apple’s iPhone, which generated a new market segment, HD FO, in 2016. Till now, Apple still uses TSMC’s inFO for its latest iPhones.
Today, heterogeneous integration is the defining trend of the next decade, with FO positioned as one of the key packaging solutions to solve front-end problems (slowing Moore’s Law). TSMC is aware of that and is diversifying its portfolio in advanced packaging, giving great importance to UHD FO solutions. This strategy positions TSMC as a company encompassing two business models. First, it is a foundry producing front-end dies with advanced technology nodes. Second, it creates advanced packaging solutions to improve its dies’ performance and bandwidth, acting as an OSAT. This strategy, combined with huge CapEx for continuous development of new solutions, makes TSMC the biggest player in this field. Integrated Fan-Out System on Wafer (InFO_SoW) is one of its latest solutions that could be used by Cerebras for its Wafer Scale Engine (WSE) starting in 2021. Moreover, TSMC is expected to invest heavily to support devices for 5G deployment and HPC applications. After TSMC, ASE has the second-largest share of the market in UHD FO. It announced significant CapEx for its wafer-level packaging business, remaining a top OSAT after the acquisition of SPIL and USI. It has produced FOCoS for Huawei networking chips since 2016, which is a significant achievement. ASE’s participation in an OSAT alliance with Siemens should strengthen its position in the coming years. Other important players, such as Samsung, PTI, and JCET, will possibly penetrate the UHD FO market in the coming years and gain more market share.
In summary, with its foundry dominant globally, its strong InFO product line-up and increased investment in its package infrastructure and innovative solutions, TSMC is in a robust position to keep and even expand its leadership.

FAN-OUT PANEL LEVEL PACKAGING IS GAINING TRACTION

Fan Out Panel Level Packaging (FOPLP) is a new reality in 2021 as its potential is growing significantly due to its ability to scale heterogeneously with large-die trends. Ideally, it is good to go as large as possible. But it is well-known that panel warpage increases with panel size. Yield is known to be better with a smaller panel since it is easier to process, test, and inspect. Hence, it is essential to find the right balance between features and panel size considering the manufacturability of the end-product. In addition, the constant need to scale smaller feature sizes will make the yield harder to manage, and cost could be negatively impacted. However, with improved equipment and processes, producing small features at panel-level with good yield is possible.
Today, Samsung Electronics has successfully used HD FOPLP for its smartwatches. This Korean giant is in a strong position because it is manufacturing its own processors based on in-house packaging solutions. Nepes is also developing its FOPLP business thanks to its decision to license M-Series and acquire the production fab from Deca Technologies. ESWIN – a newly established Chinese OSAT – is investing in FOPLP only and is currently actively qualifying and preparing to set up an FOPLP line. PTI is concentrating its attention on FOPLP success by being one of the OSATs to enter the FOPLP market space as a memory back-end specialist. It should slowly ramp up with buy-in from more customers.
In summary, panel makers entering the Fan-Out packaging market are still in line to achieve large-die high-end products with good L/S and high reliability. High volume manufacturing depends on a killer application that does not yet exist. Nevertheless, FOPLP development is active, progress is ongoing, and FOPLP is expected to gain volume at the expense of Fan-Out Wafer-Level Packaging (FOWLP), which will, however, continue generating the major part of the combined revenue.

Report's key features:

Market valuations based on top-down and bottom-up model in package units, revenue, and wafer production volumes
Market shares based on production projections
Supply value chain analysis
State-of-the-art technologies and trends
Fan-Out Panel Level Packaging (FOPLP)
End-user application adoption details

Objectives of the report:

Identify and describe which technologies can be classified as ‘Fan-Out packaging’
Clearly define the different market classes of Fan-Out packaging
Analyze key market drivers, benefits, and challenges of Fan-Out packages by application
Describe the different existing technologies, their trends, and roadmaps
Analyze the supply chain and Fan-Out landscape
Update the business status of Fan-Out technology markets
Provide a market forecast for the coming years, and estimate future trends

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