Status of the Advanced IC Substrate Industry 2022

Advanced substrate market and technology trends

We expect the global Advanced IC Substrate market’s value to have an 11% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from $15.8B in 2021 to $29.6B in 2027. This is mainly driven by high demand in mobile & consumer, automotive & mobility, and telecom & infrastructure markets.

• Integrated Circuit (IC) substrates are mainly driven by Advanced Packaging (AP), baseband for Flip Chip Chip Scale Packaging (FC CSP) and 5G wireless devices, High Performance Computing (HPC), Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), servers, and the automotive industry for FC Ball Grid Array (FC BGA). The market value is expected to have a 12% CAGR from $12.6B in 2021 to $24.3B in 2027.
• Substrate Level Printed Circuit Boards (SLPs) are mainly used in high-end smartphones, with $3B revenue in 2021 and CAGR of 6.7% to reach $4.3B by 2027.
• Embedded Die (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 to increase the complexity towards larger areas, more layers and finer pitches and line/width spacing (L/S) by adopting approaches like Semi Additive Processes (SAP), modified SAP (mSAP) or advanced mSAP (amSAP). SLP technology developments remained steady in recent years while ED technology is aiming to enable multiple dies embedding to reach more applications.

ABF substrate market share by player

The Ajinomoto Build-up Film (ABF) substrate market reached around $4.8B in 2021. The top five players, namely, Ibiden, Unimicron, NYPCB, Shinko, AT&S are responsible for almost 75% of the total ABF substrate market by surface area. Kinsus, SEMCO, Access, Daeduck, Toppan and Kyocera made up the rest of the market.

Advanced IC substrate investments

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 $15.5B. More investments are in Asia, with almost 46% in China. AT&S from Austria is the biggest investor, focusing on FC BGA, aiming to become a top three IC substrate supplier in the near future. Investments have not been entirely supported by companies, but also partially by their customers, who are co-investing with substrate players to be able to meet their demand. In those cases, there is capacity allocation to the customer that invested, meaning that the increased capacity is not supporting smaller customers.

Introduction

• Glossary
• About the authors
• Report’s objective
• Scope of the report
• Companies cited
• Who should be interested in this report
• Terminology
• What we got right, what we got wrong
• Methodology & definitions

3 Page summary

Executive summary

Noteworthy news on advanced IC substrate

Substrate Technologies Introduction

• Market and Technical Drivers
• Landscape
• Advanced IC Substrate vs. Board
• Advanced IC substrate vs traditional IC substrate
• Categories
• Construction
• Processes
• Competitive and opportunity technologies

Advanced IC Substrate

• Introduction
  • What’s new since 2019
  • Forecast comparison between 2019 vs 2022
  • Substrate landscape
• Technology Trends & Drivers
  • Trends, drivers, roadmap, demand
  • Commercialized IC Substrate
  • Technologies trend
  • Competitive Technologies
• Market Forecasts
  • IC Substrate - Revenue, units, panels
  • ABF Substrate - Revenue, units, panels
• Supply chain & players
  • Equipment and Material Suppliers
• Advanced IC Substrate Conclusion

Substrate Like PCB (SLP)

• Introduction
• What’s new since 2019
• Forecast comparison between 2019 vs 2022
• SLP landscape and definitions
• Technologies Trends and Drivers
• Where is the SLP opportunity?
• Motivation for SLP adoption
• Background and evolution
• Apple flagship smartphones – board analysis
• SLP drivers and roadmap
• Market Forecasts
• Revenue by products and global board cell
• Units by products and global board cell
• Supply chain & players
• Speculated business activities
• Top 25 players based on 2021 revenue
• Distribution by country
• Market shares by players
• SLP Conclusions

Embedded Die

• Introduction
  • ED Substrate landscape & technology
  • What’s new since 2019
  • Forecast comparison between 2019 vs 2022
• Technologies Roadmap, Trends and Drivers
  • Roadmap
  • Market trends
  • Opportunity for embedded die technology
  • Adoption in different market
• Market Forecasts
  • Revenue
  • Units
  • EMIB – interposer like forecast
• ED Supply chain & players
• ED Conclusions

Financial Analysis

China IC Substrate

Conclusion

Appendix

Yole Group – Corporate Presentation

Access, Ajinomoto, AKMMV, AMD, Apple, ASE, AT&S, Bomin Electronics, Calumet, Carsem, China Eagle Electronic, Compeq, Continental, Cyntec, QDOS, Daeduck, Daimler AG, Doosan, DSBJ, Dupont, Dyconex, EMC, Fraunhofer, Fastprint, Flexceed, Fraunhofer IZM, Fujikura, GanSystem, General Electric, Google Hemei, Hong Yuen , Horex, Huawei, Ibiden, IBM, IMEC, Infineon, Intel, JCET, Kinsus, Korea Circuit, Kyocera, LG Innotek, MacDermid Alpha, Meiko, Microship, MISpak, Mitsubishi Chemical, MKS, Nordson, Nvidia, NXP, NYPCB, Omnivision, onsemi, Oppo, Qualcomm, QDOS, Qorvo, PPT, Renesas, RiverGate, Electronics, Samco, Sarda Technologies, Schweizer, Sekisui, Shanghai Sinyang, SG Circuits, Shennan, Shinko, Showa Denko Simmtech, SiPlus, St. Jude Medical, StatsChipPAC, SPIL, Taiyo Ink, DK, Technic, Texas Instrument, Toppan, TSMC, TTM Technologies, Unimicron, Unisem, UTAC, WG Tech, Würth Elektronik, Xilinx, Xin Ai, Xiaomi, Zhen Ding Tech. Group, ZSCCSC and more

Key Features

• Focus on three advanced IC substrate-related platforms: Advanced Integrated Circuit (IC) Substrates, Substrate-Like Printed Circuit Boards (SLP) and Embedded Die (ED)
• Advanced IC substrate market forecast including Ajinomoto Build-up Film (ABF) substrate, in $US, units and wafers.
• Advanced IC substrate technology and key player trends.
• Advanced IC substrate supply chain and shortage issue.
• Advanced IC substrate investment news.
• Advanced IC substrate equipment and material players in the supply chain.
• Financial analysis of players in China.

What's new

• Updated the news in advanced IC substrate investments.
• Updated technology trends with new technologies announced by players.
• Updated roadmap until year 2027.
• Update on IC substrate shortage issue.
• Updated competitive technologies and opportunities in advanced packaging
• Added IC substrates to cover Flip Chip Systems-in-Packages (FC SiP), Ultra High Density Fan-Out (UHD FO) and 2.5D/3D packages.
• Added ABF market forecast through 2027, in $US, units and panels.
• Added equipment and material players in IC substrate supply chain.
• Added IC substrate players in China.

Product objectives

• Focusing on three advanced IC substrate platforms
  • Advanced IC substrate
  • Substrate like Printed Circuit Board (SLP)
  • Embedded die
• Deliver overview of below topics for each substrate platform
  • Market trends and drivers with key applications and how we foresee the roadmap in the future
  • Forecast for unit production, panel production and revenue
  • Technology roadmap with detail of existing technology
  • Supply chain with who is using which technologies and how the supply chain is organized.
• Overview of Chinese IC substrate makers and how they affect the market.