韩国媒体称玻璃基板正成为AI芯片先进封装新战场

The turning point that split the fortunes of Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and TSMC in the system semiconductor field came in June 2013. Until then, Apple had relied on Samsung Electronics to produce the application processors (APs) for its iPhones, but it abruptly signed a large-scale supply contract with TSMC. Nvidia, considered a leader of the artificial intelligence (AI) era, also entrusts most of its top-tier chip production to TSMC.
The decisive process that created the gap between TSMC and Samsung is a packaging process called Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS). CoWoS is a technology that places an intermediate plastic substrate on top of a plastic substrate and then arranges multiple chips on it. As the number of computing chips and memory placed on a single semiconductor substrate began to rise sharply in the 2010s, the process was developed to significantly improve communication speed and power efficiency.
A senior official in the semiconductor equipment industry explained on the 23rd that "up until the 2010s, it was true that Samsung built its business plans around memory, which earned good money, and there was a culture of treating the foundry division like an outsider." He added, "In particular, by focusing solely on the miniaturization race centered on front-end processes and relatively neglecting the packaging process, this became the cause of the tremendous struggles it has faced in recent years."
Semiconductor experts believe that cracks have finally begun to appear in the competition over the cutting-edge packaging ecosystem dominated by TSMC. This comes with the arrival of glass substrates, dubbed a game changer in the semiconductor packaging market. Park Sung-soo, CEO of JWMT, stressed that "CoWoS is reaching its technical limits, so a new market is opening," adding that "this is an opportunity for Korea's semiconductor industry to escape TSMC's shadow." He meant that seizing the lead in next-generation packaging technology centered on glass substrates could open a new door of opportunity to dominate the foundry business as well as memory. Because the performance of components such as logic dies mounted in advanced products like high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is also determined by this packaging capability, there is a strong likelihood of a direct impact on memory dominance as well.
In fact, the semiconductor market has recently been demanding the emergence of cutting-edge chips capable of handling exponentially growing computing demand. For example, the A100 80GB (gigabyte) graphics processing unit (GPU), Nvidia's flagship product in 2020, had 54.2 billion transistors. But the Rubin, released this year, has 336 billion GPU transistors, an increase of more than sixfold. The capacity of the HBM installed alongside it also jumped from 80GB to 288GB.
The problem is that conventional plastic substrates can no longer handle such changes. They warp under the weight of the chips, and the communication wiring between chips can no longer be made densely enough. Glass is heat-resistant and has the advantage of bending less even when made in a larger area. Technology to incorporate optical communication into substrates is also being researched to resolve the bottleneck that arises in chip-to-chip communication, and here too glass proves a better alternative than plastic.
Global semiconductor manufacturers are also jumping into glass substrates. Intel declared glass substrates a future growth engine early on in 2023, spending $1 billion to build a packaging research and development (R&D) facility in Chandler, Arizona, in the U.S., and recently decided to spend $3.3 billion to build glass substrate core production facilities in the Indian state of Odisha. TSMC, which had been fixated on CoWoS, has also recently conveyed plans to develop glass substrates for CoWoS to partner companies such as Japan's Ibiden and Taiwan's Innolux.
Expectations for glass substrates are rising in the market as well. SEMI (Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International) forecast that glass substrate semiconductors will begin full-scale commercialization from 2028 and grow 67.2% each year. It projects that the glass substrate market will reach $13 billion around 2040. The shares of Samsung Electro-Mechanics (009150.KS), which holds next-generation packaging technologies such as multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) along with glass substrates, started this year at 270,000 won and soared to the 1.3 million won range.
An official in the semiconductor industry explained that "once glass substrate products flow into the market in 2028, the landscape of the system semiconductor market will begin to shift," adding that "because the chip performance demanded in the AI era is rising sharply, the better manufacturer may be preferred even if it means changing the packaging ecosystem."
The government is also recognizing the importance of next-generation packaging and concentrating its support. First, it will invest 42 billion won over five years to build an advanced semiconductor packaging demonstration center. It is also pursuing a project to foster the industrial ecosystem by nurturing core materials, parts and equipment companies under the lead of demand-anchor firms, with glass substrates cited as a candidate for a pilot project. Under this approach, a final buyer such as Samsung Electronics would jointly develop, as a package, the materials, parts and equipment related to glass substrate core production, through-glass via (TGV) equipment, etching equipment and substrate manufacturing, together with several small and mid-sized firms. In addition, the government plans to invest 206.8 billion won in state funds through 2031 to develop advanced semiconductor technology.