Author: Zihao
Recently, discussions surrounding Intel's EMIB and TSMC's EMIB-like technologies have dominated industry discourse. The cost and yield advantages brought by the local silicon bridge architecture have focused market attention on the rivalry between these two 2.5D sub-routes. However, viewed within the broader advanced packaging landscape, EMIB is merely one of many technological branches.
Currently, advanced packaging has evolved into a complex ecosystem intertwined with multiple technologies, business models, and application markets. The divergence in computing power demands, the restructuring of manufacturing models, and constraints in upstream materials and equipment are jointly shaping the industry's trajectory. The extreme performance demands of AI training chips, the scalability requirements of edge and automotive markets, and the continuous pursuit of thin, light, and low-cost solutions in consumer electronics are jointly driving continuous market expansion. Different technological routes are more complementary than simply substitutive. The reallocation of the industrial value chain among the three forces—foundries, IDMs, and independent OSATs—is the industry reality that deserves deeper investigation today.
01 Computing Power Drives Market Segmentation, and Diverse Applications Shape Multifaceted Technological Demands
From a market structure perspective, advanced packaging is long past being a mere appendage to the single AI track. HPC and AI computing power account for nearly 40% of advanced packaging demand, serving as the core engine driving the growth of high-end 2.5D and 3D packaging. Consumer electronics, automotive electronics, and communications/storage collectively occupy over half of the market space, forming the industry's fundamental base. Different downstream scenarios have entirely different constraints regarding interconnect density, cost, reliability, and mass production scale, which directly determine the survival soil for various technologies.
Flagship AI chips for large model training pursue ultimate bandwidth and multi-HBM synergy capabilities; this field is still dominated by full-area silicon interposer solutions. Different versions of TSMC's (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) CoWoS correspond to different specifications. CoWoS-S targets conventional AI accelerators, while CoWoS-L supports ultra-large reticle size packaging, capable of accommodating more chiplets and HBM stacking, which is also the choice for top flagship products from NVIDIA and AMD. These products do not haggle over the packaging cost per unit, but rather value signal integrity and large-scale chiplet integration capabilities. However, the trade-off is a lengthy process chain and expensive silicon interposer materials. Coupled with the limited supply of ABF substrates, this results in a long-term shortage of high-end capacity. Top customers lock in capacity for more than two years in advance, making it very difficult for a large number of small and medium-sized design companies to secure quotas.
In scenarios such as mid-range computing power, inference chips, and automotive domain controllers, performance is no longer the sole yardstick; the weights of cost, delivery cycle, thermal management, and automotive-grade reliability have significantly increased. This is also the underlying market foundation for why EMIB and TSMC's EMIB-like technology currently under development are gaining attention. EMIB, which stands for Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge, represents a core breakthrough in Intel's technology by abandoning the traditional full-area silicon interposer design and pioneering a novel approach of local silicon bridge interconnection. This technology embeds micro silicon bridges only in critical areas where multiple chiplets require high-speed signal interconnection to achieve high-density routing, while the rest of the chip largely follows a mature, low-cost organic substrate architecture. This fundamentally solves the pain points of traditional high-end packaging, namely high cost, low yield, and difficulty in mass production. The compact micro silicon bridge process offers extremely high controllability, eliminating the need for large-area precision processing, significantly reducing raw material loss, and allowing mass production yield to be stably maintained at a high level of 98%, far exceeding traditional 2.5D packaging technologies at the same stage. Meanwhile, the streamlined structural design effectively reduces the overall thermal resistance of the package, significantly improving chip heat dissipation efficiency, making it more suitable for application scenarios with long-term high-load operations, such as servers and mid-range computing modules.
Flexibility and scalability are another major core advantage of EMIB technology. This technology can freely combine logic chiplets, I/O chiplets, and high-speed memory chiplets, is compatible with HBM memory integration solutions, and can also be integrated with Intel's Foveros 3D stacking technology to create a 3.5D packaging architecture that combines 2D interconnect efficiency with 3D integration density. Its diverse adaptability allows EMIB technology to break free from the limitations of "niche and high-priced" high-end packaging. It can meet the performance requirements of mid-to-high-end heterogeneous chips while accommodating the cost requirements of scaled mass production, filling the market gap between top-tier CoWoS packaging and traditional general-purpose packaging. As Intel gradually opens up EMIB technology for external services, a large number of chip design companies can achieve heterogeneous integration design at low costs, which also rapidly expands the industry influence of this technology. It is understood that the EMIB-T advanced packaging technology currently being developed by Intel has achieved a technology verification yield of over 90% in Google's new TPU project for the second half of 2027, codenamed "Humufish".
TSMC has also recognized the core logic and commercial value of EMIB's local silicon bridge. Combining its mature RDL (Redistribution Layer) process and wafer manufacturing advantages, it has optimized an EMIB-like technology tailored to its own production lines, targeting the mid-range advanced packaging market with a focus on low cost, high yield, and fast delivery.
Besides 2.5D-related technologies, fan-out packaging remains the largest advanced packaging track in terms of volume. TSMC's InFO, ASE's FOCoS, and the large-size RDL fan-out deployed by domestic manufacturers are widely used in products such as mobile phone main chips, RF, and network processors. They rely on mature organic RDL processes to balance cost and density, serving the massive consumer electronics and communications markets. 3D hybrid bonding technology, on the other hand, targets next-generation vertical stacking. TSMC's SoIC, Intel's Foveros Direct, and Samsung's XCube pursue micrometer or even sub-micrometer bonding pitches, targeting next-generation HBM products and high-density chiplet stacking. They are currently in a stage of gradual volume ramp-up, with yield, design tools, and testing still being continuously refined. Looking further ahead, glass interposers and panel-level packaging are seen as potential directions to break through capacity and cost bottlenecks. However, challenges in warpage control and substrate reliability have not yet been fully resolved, and time is still needed for verification before large-scale commercialization.
The coexistence of different technological routes is essentially a reflection of market segmentation. No single technology can cover all demands from flagship AI training chips to consumer electronics and automotive applications. The industry is bidding farewell to the past stage of pursuing single technological performance metrics, shifting towards a selection logic for packaging solutions that is driven backward from application goals.
02 Three Major Players Compete on the Same Stage, and the Boundaries of the Industrial Chain Are Being Rewritten
The competition in advanced packaging is not just a contest of process solutions, but also a battle of business models. The traditional packaging and testing industry has OSATs (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) as the absolute main force. However, in recent years, wafer foundries and IDM giants have massively penetrated downward into the packaging segment. The global market has formed a pattern where OSATs, wafer foundries, and IDMs compete on the same stage. The original industrial boundaries are continuously dissolving, and the distribution of the value chain has undergone significant changes.
TSMC represents a typical paradigm of wafer foundries extending downstream. It incorporates the front-end processes of advanced packaging such as CoWoS and SoIC into the wafer fab, turning packaging into an integrated service bound with tape-out. This is also the key to its monopoly in the high-end AI packaging market. In the past, chip design companies handed over their products to OSATs after tape-out. However, for high-end 2.5D products, the interposer manufacturing is completed within the wafer fab, and only subsequently handed over to packaging and testing enterprises for back-end assembly and testing. Building on this foundation, TSMC has established a comprehensive 3D Fabric platform, covering SoIC 3D hybrid bonding at the high end, deploying EMIB-like local silicon bridge solutions in the mid-range, and retaining the mature InFO fan-out process. This forms a complete technology matrix covering high-end, mid-range, and diverse scenarios, thereby consolidating customer stickiness and coping with the competitive pressure brought by Intel's IFS external business.
Intel follows an open IDM route. EMIB and Foveros initially served its own CPU and GPU products and have gradually opened up externally with the advancement of its IFS foundry business. Its advantage lies in its architectural understanding, forming a complete system from chiplet definition and packaging platforms to EDA tools. However, its shortcoming is that the accumulation of an external customer ecosystem is still under construction, making it unable to deeply bind massive tape-out orders like TSMC. Samsung also relies on its IDM accumulation. I-Cube and XCube leverage their own HBM memory advantages to enter heterogeneous integration. However, the pace of expanding external logic chip customers is relatively slow, serving more internal product lines and a small number of customized projects.
OSATs represented by ASE, Amkor, and JCET occupy a special position in the industry. After the front-end interposer manufacturing for high-end 2.5D is grasped by wafer foundries, OSATs mostly undertake back-end assembly and testing businesses, while maintaining a huge fundamental base in fan-out, flip-chip, power, and automotive-grade packaging. ASE and Amkor are also advancing their proprietary 2.5D solutions to take on some spillover orders. Domestic companies like JCET, TFME, and Hua Tian Technology continue to increase their investment in large-size fan-out and 2.5D R&D, focusing on the automotive, server, and network chip markets. While there is still a gap with the big three in the most cutting-edge high-end segment, they possess strong competitiveness in the vast mid-range market.
The game among the three forces has brought about a significant change: advanced packaging is no longer a simple back-end process, but a systems engineering effort that runs through chip definition, chiplet partitioning, wafer manufacturing, and assembly and testing. When chip design companies work on chiplet architectures, they must consider in advance the capabilities of the packaging platform, the selection of interposers or silicon bridges, and substrate supply constraints. Packaging has been moved forward into the early stages of chip design. This change has also raised the industry threshold. New entrants not only need to buy equipment and build production lines, but also require supporting IP, EDA tools, and testing solutions. Mere process stacking is difficult to form comprehensive competitiveness. At the same time, upstream materials and equipment are becoming a common bottleneck for the entire industry. Supply constraints on ABF substrates, high-precision die attach and bonding equipment, and special substrates mean that both CoWoS and EMIB routes must jointly face the realistic constraints of the supply chain.
03 Comprehensive Layout and Multi-Path Selection Become Future Development Trends
Market public opinion easily falls into route narratives, keen on discussing whether Technology A will replace Technology B. But returning to industrial reality, capacity constraints, cost contradictions, design ecosystems, and yield control are the core variables that truly determine the pace of technology implementation. Even if the local silicon bridge solution has a considerable cost advantage, it does not mean it will quickly disrupt the existing landscape. The maturity of a packaging platform depends not only on the architectural principles but also on supporting EDA tools, Known Good Die (KGD) testing, substrate synergy, and reliability verification. It takes a long cycle for a large number of chip customers to complete product validation and certification, and there is a huge gap between a technological concept and large-scale mass production.
For some time in the future, the market will continue to maintain a situation of long-term coexistence of multiple routes. Full silicon interposers will continue to hold the top-tier flagship computing power market, supporting large model training chips; local silicon bridge solutions will expand their share in mid-range inference, servers, and some AI acceleration chip fields; fan-out packaging will continue to dominate the mainstream market for consumer electronics and communication chips; 3D hybrid bonding will gradually penetrate into memory stacking and high-density chiplet scenarios; glass interposers and panel-level packaging will continue to iterate, waiting to release their potential after process conditions mature. Various technologies are not mutually exclusive; they will even integrate with each other, such as combining local silicon bridges with RDL interposers, and pairing 3D stacking with 2.5D interconnects, flexibly combining according to product requirements.
The dimensions of competition are also shifting. It is no longer just about comparing the parameter metrics of interconnect pitch; the weights of cost per unit bandwidth, delivery cycle, the entire design ecosystem, and supply chain resilience are continuously rising. In the past, the supply of advanced packaging was highly concentrated, with top customers occupying the vast majority of high-end capacity, leaving small and medium-sized design companies with limited choices. As multiple platforms mature, customers will have more room for selection, enabling them to weigh and choose among full silicon interposers, local silicon bridges, fan-out, and other solutions based on their own chip positioning, thereby reducing reliance on a single platform.
For the entire semiconductor industry, advanced packaging bears the heavy responsibility of performance improvement in the post-Moore era, but the industry also needs to view technological hype rationally. The industry discussions on EMIB and EMIB-like technologies essentially reflect the entire market's strong demand for "reducing the cost of computing power." From high-end AI computing power to automotive and consumer electronics, from wafer foundries and IDMs to independent OSATs, and from materials and equipment to EDA tools, only the coordinated progress of the entire chain will truly drive the heterogeneous integration industry to continue evolving forward.