Taiwan's semiconductor packaging industry to benefit from 2.5/3D technologies

SEMI says design tools, manufacturing, packaging and testing solutions for 2.5D-IC process are available this year, and the most important issue is how to improve its throughput to enable 2.5D-IC mass production in 2014. Taiwan is said to benefit from the growth of three-dimensional semiconductor fabrication technologies. Taiwan with a market share of higher than 50%, is home to leading packaging and testing companies such as ASE, SPIL, PTI, and ChipMOS. Amkor and STATS ChipPAC also have semiconductor packaging plants in Taiwan. SEMI quotes a forecast from ITIS, where it says the Taiwan IC packaging and testing industry will significantly grow by 15.5 percent, and the driving force is from growing demands from the networking, graphics, wireless, computing device, and mobile handsets markets. SEMI also shares another forecast from Yole Développement, where it says the market value of all the devices using TSV packaged in 3D in the 3D-IC or 3D-WLCSP platforms (CMOS image sensors, Ambient Light Sensors, Power Amplifiers, RF and inertial MEMS) was worth $2.7 billion in 2011. By 2017, the market value is said to reach almost $40 billion, representing 9 percent of the total semiconductor value. One more research point shared by SEMI is: TechNavio analysts forecasted the global 3D-IC market to grow at a CAGR of 19.7 percent over the period 2012-2016. One of the key fa...