On March 18th, reports surfaced indicating that TSMC is contemplating establishing advanced packaging capabilities in Japan, with one option under consideration being the introduction of its Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology.
CoWoS involves stacking chips together and packaging them onto a substrate, ultimately forming 2.5D or 3D configurations, which can reduce chip footprint, as well as power consumption and costs.
However, due to the precision required, CoWoS is currently exclusively manufactured by TSMC, with all existing CoWoS capacity located in Taiwan, China.
Therefore, should TSMC introduce its advanced CoWoS packaging technology to Japan, it would mark the first instance of TSMC exporting CoWoS packaging technology.
The primary motivation behind TSMC's consideration lies in the high demand for advanced packaging, particularly driven by the flourishing development of artificial intelligence globally.
A senior official from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry expressed that the Japanese government would welcome TSMC's introduction of advanced packaging industry and actively support its ecosystem.
However, analysts caution that if TSMC establishes advanced packaging capacity in Japan, its scale may be limited, as most of TSMC's CoWoS clients are currently based in the United States, and it remains unclear how significant the domestic demand for CoWoS packaging in Japan is.
