Theses›Semiconductor manufacturing›Advanced packaging
Advanced packaging
Packaging rent pools in materials, equipment and substrates, not OSAT assembly
- Closing
- $86B by 2035
The call, a draftPackaging is winning as the performance lever: $46B in 2024 and $79.4B by 2030 on Yole's numbers, with hybrid bonding and glass substrates moving into volume. The window is late, since the listed equipment and substrate makers have already re-rated past the gain.
- D1CoWoS-class capacity was fully booked with 52-78 week lead times in late 2025, and TSMC cut 28nm output by more than 25% to move capacity into advanced nodes and packaging.
- D2Hybrid bonding is in volume for logic (TSMC SoIC at 6µm, AMD 3D V-Cache, NVIDIA Rubin), and BESI's Q1 2026 bookings of €269.7M more than doubled year on year across about 20 customers.
- D3Glass substrates got dates in 2026: Intel showed thick-core glass at NEPCON Japan on 30 Jan and is moving it into volume at Chandler, and TSMC targets CoWoS-G volume in H2 2026.
- R1The listed expressions have re-rated hard, with BESI at about 50-68x forward earnings and Ibiden up about 690% in a year.
- R2JEDEC raised the HBM4 height limit, so HBM4 stays on micro-bumps and hybrid bonding for memory slips to HBM5 around 2028-29.
- R3Glass-core is still at pilot and qualification in 2026, with fragility and metal adhesion unsolved at volume yields.
- R4Packaging equipment and materials companies are usually bought before they scale, as Xperi's hybrid-bonding IP was, and the bonder layer stays with BESI and Applied Materials.
- C1TSMC's glass-substrate CoWoS-G reaches volume production for NVIDIA-class accelerators.31 Dec 2026
- C2A new accelerator or HBM generation ships with copper hybrid bonding under 10µm pitch, or a glass-core substrate enters customer qualification at a named chipmaker.30 Jun 2027
- C3A glass-core substrate reaches qualified volume production for an AI accelerator or HBM base.31 Dec 2028
Rests onthe beliefs underneath
Supported by · confidence
What would prove itdated tests, open and resolved
- 1TSMC CoWoS-G reaching volume production in H2 2026.Dec 2026 · open
- 2By mid-2027 at least one new named AI accelerator or HBM product generation ships using sub-10um-pitch copper hybrid bonding beyond the 2026 baseline, OR a glass-core substrate enters customer qualification at a named IDM/OSAT.Jun 2027 · open
- 3Advanced-packaging revenue grows faster than leading-edge logic-wafer revenue every year through 2028, as packaging absorbs more of the performance budget than the node.Dec 2028 · open
- 4Hybrid bonding becomes the dominant high-density 3D interconnect for HBM and logic-on-logic by 2028, displacing micro-bump for the leading tier.Dec 2028 · open
- 5Whether micro-bump is still the leading-tier default and glass is still at sampling.Dec 2028 · open
- 6Advanced-packaging revenue against leading-edge logic wafer revenue, year by year.Dec 2028 · open
Expressionslisted, private, technologies
- 000660.KSSK Hynix
- cheap
- 042700.KSHanmi Semiconductor
- full
- 0981.HKSMIC
- cheap
- 1347.HKHua Hong Semiconductor
- expensive
- 4062.TIbiden
- fair
- 5201.TAGC Inc.
- full
- 6146.TDisco Corporation
- fair
- 688012.SSAMEC (Advanced Micro-Fabrication)
- expensive
- 688256.SSCambricon
- full
- 7735.TSCREEN Holdings
- cheap
- 8035.TTokyo Electron
- fair
- AMATApplied Materials
- cheap
- AMBAAmbarella
- full
- AMDAMD
- full
- ASXASE Technology
- expensive
- BESI.ASBE Semiconductor (Besi)
- cheap
- COHUCohu
- fair
- FORMFormFactor
- fair
- INTCIntel
- full
- KLICKulicke & Soffa
- full
- LRCXLam Research
- cheap
- MUMicron
- cheap
- NVDANVIDIA
- cheap
- TSMTSMC
- cheap
- UMCUnited Microelectronics
- cheap
- VECOVeeco Instruments
- cheap
Private · 4 private companies.
IMEC · Besi (BE Semiconductor Industries) · Fraunhofer IZM · Absolics
8 more private companies tracked, not shown
What changedthe record, newest first
- 23 Jun 2026Glass chip substrates moved from "someday" to a dated 2026 schedule: Intel into volume manufacturing, TSMC targeting volume by year-end, Samsung-Korea suppliers shipping samples to AMD.
- 23 Jun 2026The industry keeps voting for packaging over raw shrink: TSMC is cutting older-node output to free packaging capacity and Intel is staking its comeback on it.
- 21 Jun 2026When chip substrates move from plastic to glass, the winners may be the display-glass companies (Corning, AGC, Schott) crossing into chips, a classic pick-and-shovel value migration, not the chipmakers themselves.
Reading
Show the reading
- 15 Apr 2026ISSCC 2026: NVIDIA & Broadcom CPO, HBM4 & LPDDR6, TSMC Active LSI, Logic-Based SRAM, UCIe-S and More
- 14 Mar 2026SemiAnalysis (Dylan Patel) — the three shifting bottlenecks to scaling AI compute (logic/litho, memory, power)
- 6 Feb 2026Memory Mania: How a Once-in-Four-Decades Shortage Is Fueling a Memory Boom
- 13 Jan 2026Interconnects Beyond Copper, 1,000 CFETs, SK Hynix Next-Gen NAND, 2D Materials, and More
- 8 Jan 2026Apple-TSMC: The Partnership That Built Modern Semiconductors