Samsung Electro-Mechanics to up sales ratio of premium chip package substrate to 50%

The Samsung affiliate said it would increase the rate of sales of its Flip Chip Ball Grid Array to 50 percent by 2026.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics Vice President Hwang Chi-won holds press briefing on Thursday. [SAMSUNG ELECTRO-MECHANICS]

Samsung Electro-Mechanics pledged to ramp up the portion of sales of its premium chip package substrate known as Flip Chip Ball Grid Array (FCBGA) to 50 percent by 2026 in order to capitalize on the continued growth of advanced processors.

The electronics component supplier, 23.7 percent controlled by Samsung Electronics, said it plans to deploy the high-end package substrates in servers, vehicles and networks. It forged supply deal with U.S. chip giant AMD for high-computing servers in July.

FCBGA is a type of premium chip-packaging substrates that offers a larger surface area and higher layer counts for denser interconnectivity among chips placed on the substrate.

As the architecture of AI processors gets more complicated, more chips are required to be placed on a single substrate while requiring more condensed connectivity.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics' FCBGA for servers offers a substrate surface that is four times larger than those for ordinary PCs and allows for 20-level stacks, an increase of twofold, the company said.

The industry is currently monopolized by a handful of players from Japan, Taiwan and Korea due to the complexity of the technology.

"In the past, devices were handling a lot of things including energy efficiency," said Hwang Chi-won, vice president of Samsung Electro-Mechanics at a media briefing held Thursday.

"Now, substrates are emerging to tackle such issues in order to lower costs while enhancing performance."

Samsung Electro-Mechanics succeeded in mass-producing server-dedicated FCBGA substrates in October, 2022, a first in Korea, and has made a cumulative investment of 1.9 trillion won ($1.4 billion) in the technology. It set up manufacturing facilities in Busan and Vietnam dedicated to high-end products.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]