Apple reportedly is in talks with a Korean substrate maker for the supply of ABF- (Ajinomoto Build-up Film)-based FC-BGA substrates for processing Apple Car chip solutions, DigiTimes reports citing “industry sources.”
Jay Liu and Willis Ke for DigiTimes:
It seems plausible that Apple might seek ABF substrates from a Korean substrate maker that could give full capacity support for Apple Car production, the sources said.
Because Taiwan’s major ABF substrate suppliers (Unimicron Technology, Nan Ya PCB, and Kinsus Interconnect Technology) and their peers in Japan and Austria have their capacity almost fully booked by major vendors of CPUs, GPUs, networking chips, FPGAs, and other HPC chips for the next few years, they can hardly have extra ABF capacity for Apple Car demand, the sources continued.
At the moment, Taiwan’s Unimicron lands the majority of orders for ABF substrates needed to process Apple’s M1 chips series.
MacDailyNews Take: ABF substrate takes its name from Ajinomoto Co., a Japanese company that produces the substrate’s film-like insulation. The material is the preferred packaging technology for CPUs because it facilitates high-performance computations by high-end chips.
Back in September, Fortune reported that “many of the world’s most advanced semiconductors can’t run without the substrates” and that “supplies are likely to remain constrained until at least 2025 due to limited capacity.”
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