Since Moore's Law encountered a bottleneck, the development of the packaging and testing field has gradually attracted the attention of the industry. New forces in the packaging industry represented by advanced packaging are changing the pattern of the packaging field.

Packaging and testing is a relatively mature link in China's semiconductor industry chain. When the global semiconductor packaging and testing market has fanned its wings, the field of packaging and testing in China has also been shaken.

According to semiconductor industry observations, the article "Ten Years of Changes in Packaging and Testing Plants" previously released has pointed out that my country's semiconductor industry has been developing rapidly in recent years, and at present, some of my country's manufacturers are no longer as large as international manufacturers.

Changjiang Electronics Technology, Tongfu Microelectronics and Tianshui Huatian are representatives of my country's semiconductor packaging and testing field. With the advent of advanced packaging, foundries have taken the lead to set foot in advanced packaging technology, which has also had a certain impact on traditional OSAT manufacturers. In this case, traditional semiconductor packaging and testing manufacturers have also begun to have new plans.

In the previous World Semiconductor Conference 2021, Changjiang Electronics released its development roadmap. The company said that Changjiang Electronics will shift gears and speed up in the heterogeneous technology track, and mass-produce some advanced packaging technologies suitable for the market. According to their plan, between 2022 and 2024, Changjiang Electronics will introduce more advanced packaging technologies such as 2.5D and 3D.

It is understood that, in order to face the market demand of chiplet heterogeneous integrated applications, Changjiang Electronics will also launch the XDFOI series of solutions. To empower mobile and automotive, communications, computing, and medical applications.

In addition, Changjiang Electronics Technology also issued an announcement this year that the company’s "annual production of 10 billion pieces of high-density hybrid integrated circuits and module packaging projects for communications" is implemented by its wholly-owned subsidiary Changjiang Electronics Technology (Suqian) Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as " Changdian Suqian"), the company plans to increase the capital of Changdian Suqian by RMB 840 million to implement the fundraising project.

It is not only Changjiang Electronics that has a layout for the advanced. According to the response of Tongfu Microelectronics on the investor interactive platform on June 18, the company insists on IC packaging and testing as its main business, and has related 3D packaging and testing technology layout. .

As we all know, after acquiring 85% of AMD Suzhou and AMD Penang in 2016, Tongfu Microelectronics realized the development model of "joint venture + cooperation" with AMD and entered the AMD supply chain. As the leader of heterogeneous technology, AMD may also become one of the foundations for Tongfu Microelectronics to develop advanced packaging.

In May of this year, Huatian Technology issued a non-public offering announcement. The announcement showed that the company plans to raise no more than 5.1 billion yuan for the expansion of integrated circuit multi-chip packaging and the expansion of high-density system-level integrated circuit packaging and testing. project.

According to the content of its announcement, Huatian Technology has independently developed multi-chip packaging (MCP) technology, multi-chip stack (3D) packaging technology, thin high-density integrated circuit technology, and integrated circuit packaging that have reached the international advanced or domestic leading level. Anti-separation technology, 16nm wafer-level bump technology, C2W and TSV-based surface acoustic filter packaging technology, etc., realized the mass production introduction of a series of packaging and testing products such as various processors, memories, radio frequency basebands, and fingerprint recognition , Forming a certain production capacity, technology and scale competitive advantage, and the construction of this fundraising project will further enhance the company’s advanced packaging and testing level and production scale, improve production efficiency and product quality, and enhance the company’s profitability. Promote the rapid development of enterprises.

In addition to the leading packaging and testing companies, there are also many domestic companies dedicated to the development of the semiconductor packaging and testing industry.

On the whole, according to the statistics of the China Semiconductor Association, in 2019, the number of packaging and testing companies in mainland China has exceeded 120. The market size of my country's packaging and testing industry has also increased from 103.4 billion yuan in 2012 to 219.6 billion yuan in 2018. The compound growth rate was 13.38%.

In this context, in addition to the well-known semiconductor packaging and testing giants, there are also changes that have occurred in some domestic companies dedicated to the packaging and testing field, which are also worthy of attention.

According to the list of China's top ten semiconductor packaging and testing companies released by CSIA in 2020, we see Nantong Huada Microelectronics, Quanxun RF Technology and other companies.

Quanxun RF Technology became a member of Qualcomm after Qualcomm acquired the entire equity of RF360 Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd in 2019. It is an important production base of Qualcomm in the RF front-end business. Its process and technical positioning are mainly packaging and testing. . In May of this year, the second phase of Qualcomm-Quanxun RF project started in Wuxi High-tech Zone (Xinwu District). The project is planned to be completed and put into use at the end of 2022, and to start trial production at the beginning of 2023 and gradually expand production.

Haitai Semiconductor was jointly invested and constructed by Taiji Industrial and SK Hynix in 2009. It mainly deals with integrated circuit chip probe testing, semiconductor memory packaging and packaging testing. Haitai Semiconductor’s packaging and testing advantages lie in DRAM products. According to relevant media reports, Haitai has adopted multiple measures such as product structure optimization and production line technology upgrades. Its monthly packaging capacity has exceeded 1.2 billion Gb capacity, and its annual production capacity accounts for approximately global 13% of DRAM packaging and testing capacity. Last year, Hitech Semiconductor and SK Hynix formally signed a five-year third post-process service contract. In this regard, the company also stated that the signing of the third-phase post-process service contract of Hitech Semiconductor opened a new course of cooperation between Taiji Industry and SK Hynix and opened a new chapter in the development of Hitech Semiconductor.

SanDisk Semiconductor is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corporation of the United States. It is mainly engaged in the research and development, packaging and testing of advanced flash memory storage products. It is one of the largest flash memory storage product packaging and testing factories in the world. The product types produced by the company mainly include SD, MicroSD, and iNAND flash memory modules.

In the article "Challenges Facing Packaging and Testing Plants" previously published by Semiconductor Industry Observation, Risto Puhakka, president of VLSI Research, a well-known research organization, once said that one of the pressures OSAT feels comes from China. There are a large number of packaging factories in China, whether through subsidies or other means, their costs are much lower. At the same time, he also pointed out that large-scale OSATs are currently distributed all over Asia, but China represents a big growth opportunity.

Judging from the above information, some domestic packaging and testing companies have the blessing of leading semiconductor chip companies. With the help of these leading companies, domestic packaging and testing companies have achieved certain results in the subdivision of fields. On the other hand, in these subdivisions, we see that traditional packaging technology still has room for development for domestic packaging and testing manufacturers.

The development of the semiconductor packaging and testing field is closely related to the development of the entire semiconductor industry. Especially for the current semiconductor industry, the increase in start-ups has also brought new opportunities for development in the field of semiconductor packaging and testing.

As far as the Chinese market is concerned, China’s chip demand will exceed US$400 billion in 2020, and imports of US$380 billion of chips will exceed US$500 billion by 2030. The localization rate will also increase from the current 15% to 70%. The US technology trade game, the fiery capital market, and the dividends of Chinese policies have spawned a large number of small and medium-sized chip companies. From 2014 to 2020, the number of domestic chip companies has increased from 681 to 2,218.

And we all know that compared with leading chip manufacturers, it is difficult for small and medium chip companies to get supporting services from large suppliers. Especially in the past two years of global capacity shortages, the situation for start-ups has become even more difficult.

As a result, semiconductor supply chain services came into being, which includes supply chain services in the field of packaging and testing.

In martial arts in the world, only fast is not broken, especially for start-ups, the faster the sample verification, the more likely it is to ensure that their products are released to the market quickly. In order to help start-up companies to smoothly transition to the mass production stage, Moore Elite has launched a fast chip packaging service, which can realize fast-sealing and proofing within 5-7 days of delivery. It is understood that the Moore Elite Hefei Rapid Packaging Engineering Center was put into production two years ago, focusing on QFN/BGA/LGA/SiP series products. It is currently in full production, serving more than 500 customers, and delivering nearly 3,000 chips.

On the basis of this business, the Moore Elite Chongqing Advanced Packaging Innovation Center also just started production at the end of June this year, focusing on "quick seal design, mass production packaging, SiP design", mainly providing QFP/SOP/ceramic/metal packaging Engineering and small-volume production services. According to the plan, Moore Elite will also start the operation of the Wuxi SiP advanced packaging base next, providing SiP packaging capacity with an annual output of nearly 100 million pieces.

Moore Elite expects that through self-built factories and production capacity, fast-sealing engineering batches, and early small-scale production of 20% of the products shipped in one million years will be left in the self-built packaging base to quickly respond to customer needs; product quality and yield are fully verified Later, large-scale mass production is outsourced to large-scale packaging plants, seamlessly connecting to large-scale mass production, and chip companies are not allowed to worry about the packaging process, thereby accelerating the development of chip design companies.

From the perspective of this business model of seamless engineering batch production and flexible production capacity, it also shows that the development of Chinese chip design companies has also promoted the growth of a new model in the field of packaging and testing.

Among the many domestic semiconductor packaging and testing companies, the common reflection is that the domestic semiconductor industry has ushered in prosperity. As a link in the semiconductor industry chain, domestic packaging and testing manufacturers must not only face greater market demand, but also step up technological upgrades to meet the pursuit of domestic chip design manufacturers. All of this puts forward new requirements for domestic semiconductor packaging and testing companies.

On the other hand, in the face of changes in the value of the packaging and testing field, there are still some companies involved in the semiconductor packaging and testing business across the border, which is another form of challenge for domestic packaging and testing manufacturers. Under such circumstances, how can domestic traditional packaging and testing companies consolidate their position in the market is also a question that needs to be considered.