TDK拟三年投约400亿日元扩产AI服务器薄膜电感，量产与出货分别要到FY2027/FY2028

TOKYO -- Japan's TDK plans to ramp up production of electronic components for artificial intelligence servers, as it looks to tap booming demand from the AI industry.
The company expects to invest about 40 billion yen ($260 million) in two domestic factories over the next three years to increase output capacity of thin-film inductors, tiny electronic components that help regulate and stabilize the flow of currents to processors, according to TDK executives.
An inductor resists sudden changes in electrical current. In a power-supply circuit, that helps stabilize voltages required by processors.
TDK is betting that thin-film inductors will be increasingly used in new power-delivery systems designed to supply electricity to semiconductors more efficiently.
Such systems are intended to address a growing challenge for cutting-edge AI servers. As graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips at the heart of AI servers, become more powerful and consume ever more electricity, efficient power delivery is becoming vital to minimizing energy losses.
TDK will spend 35 billion yen at a plant in Yamanashi prefecture and 5 billion yen at a manufacturing facility in Yamagata prefecture.
The Yamanashi site will produce thin-film inductors for AI chips, while the Yamagata plant will make them for optical transceivers, devices that convert electrical and optical signals to transmit large volumes of data between servers and other equipment.
TDK plans to begin volume production of high-performance thin-film inductors compatible with the new server power-delivery architecture during the fiscal year ending March 2027, and to start shipping them to major chipmakers from the following fiscal year.
A key challenge for AI servers is their rapidly rising power consumption as the GPUs that serve as their computational engines become increasingly powerful.
This has spurred a high-stakes race among chipmakers and component suppliers to develop more efficient ways of delivering power to GPUs. Thin-film inductors are expected to see wider adoption in such designs.
One approach drawing particular attention is called vertical power delivery, in which power components are positioned beneath the GPU rather than alongside it.
Compared with the conventional layout, this arrangement shortens the electrical path between the GPU and the power-delivery components, reducing resistance and other losses. It can cut power losses by an estimated 30% to 50%.
TDK expects demand to grow for thin-film inductors embedded in the package substrate beneath the GPU, a configuration particularly suited to vertical power delivery.
The embedded inductors are only about one-tenth as thick as conventional products and must be manufactured with micrometer-level dimensional precision.
Only a handful of companies worldwide are capable of mass-producing such embedded inductors. TDK developed the technology by applying thin-film fabrication techniques originally honed in the production of hard-disk-drive (HDD) components.
TDK's passive-components business, which includes inductors, performed strongly in the April-June period this year, with revenue rising 28% from a year earlier to 176.8 billion yen. The segment accounts for 24% of the company's total sales and roughly 20% of operating profit, making it one of TDK's core businesses.