The shortage of ABF substrate supply may continue until 2025
At present, many notebook computer manufacturers say that in the rest of 2021, processor supply problems are not big, and most of the shortages encountered in manufacturing are concentrated in chips such as network, audio, and power management. However, by 2022, the supply of processors involving mobile platforms may be tighter than in 2021.
It is understood that the reason is due to ABF substrate supply problems. In fact, for a long time in 2021, the supply of ABF substrates has been in short supply, and the supply chain has encountered great difficulties. As early as April this year, there were reports that Intel and AMD have successively invested in packaging facilities and substrate production in an effort to eliminate the constraints on the supply of ABF substrates. In the summer, Intel’s Chief Financial Officer George Davies said at the meeting that the lack of ABF substrates is a problem that Intel has been trying to solve in the past few months, and the supply is under tremendous pressure.
According to DigiTimes reports, it is expected that ABF substrates will become a small number of parts in the notebook computer production supply chain that will have an enlarged supply gap, which will reach 5% to 15%. In addition to the tight supply of ABF substrates, manufacturers give priority to server use is a very important reason.
Statistics point out that the proportion of servers in the supply of ABF substrates in 2022 will increase from 15% to 25%, and it will increase to more than 30% from 2023 to 2025. In contrast, the proportion of PCs will drop from 41% in 2021 to 27% in 2025. One reason for the increase in the proportion of servers is that the new generation of server CPUs from Intel and AMD have expanded the carrier board area by at least 20%, and the number of layers has increased by 2 to 4 layers compared with previous products. Coupled with the introduction of Chiplet packaging technology, the pressure on yield will become even greater. Insiders believe that the shortage of ABF substrate supply may continue until 2025.
