Amkor and Intel report that they are teaming up for Amkor high volume manufacturing (HVM) of EMIB due to “interest from the AI Industry.”
Through this agreement, Amkor will implement EMIB assembly processes at its Korea, Portugal and upcoming Arizona manufacturing facilities, creating an alternative source for this advanced packaging solution and strengthening the US domestic supply chain for critical packaging technologies.
IFTLE readers know that one of the biggest bottlenecks in the US chip supply chain is the lack of domestically available advanced packaging facilities.
Intel’s EMIB technology enables high-density interconnects between multiple semiconductor dies in a package and has become an accepted alternative to silicon interposer technology for many applications. Intel has successfully implemented this technology in its own server CPU platforms, such as Sapphire Rapids and Granite Rapids.
With NVIDIA’s AI chip solutions leading the way, the demand for technologies like TSMC’s CoWoS has increased to the point where the supply chain cannot meet the capacity requirements. Up to now, TSMC has been the dominant entity in the realm of advanced packaging technologies, with solutions like CoWoS. It now appears that Intel Foundry, led by its EMIB and Foveros solutions, wants to get into that market space.
EMIB is expected to be a dominant contributor to Intel’s external foundry business revenue. There are reports that MediaTek, Google, Qualcomm, and Tesla have all shown interest in this solution.
AI players are looking at Intel’s packaging services, partly because TSMC’s CoWoS capacity is limited and not able to supply the required units for future AI expansion.
As we have shared with IFTLE readers before, anyone using TSMC AZ chip production are required to ship the wafers produced in Arizona to Taiwan for packaging, which adds higher costs and longer time. With Intel/Amkor, companies should have access to semiconductor and advanced packaging services in the US.
It is rumored that major US players ae seriously looking to Intel for advanced packaging like EMIB and Foveros (Figure 2). For instance, there are reports that Intel could be supplying packaging technology for Google’s TPU v9, (expected I 2027 and Meta’s MTIA AI chip.
In addition, Intel’s Foveros Direct3D technology is recognized as a strong technical solution, which is triggering companies like NVIDIA to consider adopting it in the future.
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