Semiconductor packaging must be paid more attention because the semiconductor ecosystem cannot be grown without packaging
Incumbent President of the US Joe Biden along with his officials have formed two new strategies, which would keep China away from accessing the top-notch chipsets and semiconductor equipment, thereby hindering the technology growth of Beijing, while boosting manufacturing of chips in the US. The new international scuffle over chips is advanced semiconductor packaging, which experts argue is long behind the schedule.
Subsidies are one of the major areas that the government is focusing in effort to magnetize chip manufacturers in the US. Representative Jay Obernolte, a California Republican who is one of two vice-chairs of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus, told Bloomberg that semiconductor packaging must be paid more attention because the semiconductor ecosystem cannot be grown without packaging. There will be no positive impact with developing packaging in-house, stated Obernolte.
Packaging, Assembly, and Testing are mostly viewed as back-end manufacturing and it has always had the least importance in the semiconductor industry coupled with lesser innovation and lower productivity compared to front-end chip manufacturing. Then also, the volume of sophistication is increasing swiftly as the new technologies enabling chips to be stacked, combined, and their superior performance to which industry insiders are calling an inflection point.
Experts feel that although advanced packaging cannot help China to compete with USA’s semiconductor growth, it can help the latter to craft faster, cost-effective systems for computing by integrating various chips closely. This particular scenario could help China to save its latest chip technology, which is high-priced and available in a very limited quantity.
Chinese premier Xi Jinping back in 2015 announced the Made in China program, which has prioritized the growth of semiconductor packaging technology. 38 percent of the globe’s ATMP market is captured by China, claims Semiconductor Industry Association. Although China still falls behind the US and Taiwan in advanced semiconductor packaging; but in wafer processing, the country is developing at a large-scale.
China is furnished with a huge volume of back-end facilities and also boasts of having the globe’s third biggest ATMP firm, dubbed JCET Group, which is just behind Taiwan’s ASE Group and USA’s Amkor Technology in terms of profit. The Chinese firms are now busy in grabbing huge volumes of market share via JCET’s acquisition of a cutting-edge production facility in Singapore and also the setting-up of a top-notch packaging unit in Jiangyin.
