Industry insiders say that currently there is a significant shortage in CoWoS supply, and demand growth is exceeding expectations.
Demand for AI servers continues to rise, and Taiwan Semiconductor is accelerating the expansion of CoWoS.
Equipment manufacturers have expressed that currently there is a significant shortage in CoWoS supply. Although equipment factories have been delivering equipment in recent months for the big orders placed earlier this year, demand growth has exceeded expectations. Taiwan Semiconductor has placed urgent orders with the equipment factories once again, and the expected visibility of orders in Honso, Xinyun, and Junhua alone has reached 2027.
It is estimated that in the second half of 2024, Taiwan Semiconductor's CoWoS monthly production capacity can be expected to be gradually increased from the originally established 32,000 wafers per month to 40,000 wafers per month. Monthly production capacity is expected to continue to increase to 58,000 wafers per month by 2025. With the opening of the new plant in Jiayi in 2028, production capacity is expected to significantly increase year by year during this period.
TrendForce Foresight Consulting states that for the Blackwell platform, the die size of B100 and other chips has doubled that of H100. It is estimated that Taiwan Semiconductor's CoWos total production capacity will increase by 150% annually in 2024. After becoming the mainstream in 2025, the annual growth rate of CoWos production capacity will reach 70%, with NVIDIA's demand accounting for nearly half.
Regarding HBM, as the NVIDIA GPU platform advances, H100 is primarily equipped with 80GB of HBM3. By 2025, B200 is expected to be equipped with 288GB of HBM3e, with the capacity of a single chip almost three to four times the current level. According to the expansion plans of the three major manufacturers, HBM production is expected to double in 2025.
Packaging equipment related companies:
ASMPT (00522): ASMPT is a major supplier of 2.5D advanced packaging technology, including TCB, for Taiwan Semiconductor's CoWoS and HBM products. The future potential for AI computing is still enormous, and CoWoS packaging as a bottleneck in the industry chain will continue to benefit from increased demand.