ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it plans to launch a new high-end chip testing fab in the US next month to better serve its key customers based in North America, particularly California-based artificial intelligence (AI) customers.
The new US testing facility would be operated by the firm’s subsidiary ISE Labs Inc, it said.
ASE’s major customers, and high-ranking US officials and representatives from American Institute in Taiwan are to attend the fab’s opening ceremony on July 12, it said.
Photo: CNA
ISE Labs last year acquired a 5,942m2 facility in San Jose, California, for US$24 million to expand capacity, ASE said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
ISE Labs’ new testing fab would be part of ASE’s broader global expansion plans, ASE said.
ASE is scouting potential sites to deploy advanced chip packaging capacity in the US, Japan and Mexico, in response to customers’ growing demand to strengthen supply chain resilience amid mounting geopolitical risks, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉) told reporters on the sideline of the company’s shareholders’ meeting.
“With this substantial US investment, we intend to demonstrate our goal to create a global deployment. Our purpose is to take good care of our North American clients, very important clients, especially our AI clients based in California,” Wu said.
Additionally, ASE has applied to the US government to create a free trade zone in the region, allowing customers from different countries to ship advanced wafers there for testing and simplifying tedious export procedures, Wu said.
In Mexico, ASE has acquired a plot of land to build an automative electronics and power units supply chain there, with its subsidiary Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co (環旭電子), Wu said, targeting North America’s automative electronics used in autonomous vehicles and next-generation robots.
In Japan, ASE is looking for a location to build a larger-scale advanced packing facility than its operation in Yamagata, Wu said.
In Malaysia, ASE is looking to expand its capacity in Penang, where the company operates a major manufacturing site, to cope with increasing demand from a European automative chipmaker, he said.
The companies have inked a long-term supply agreement, he added.
ASE also raised its forecast for the revenue growth from advanced packaging technology, or chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), this year, due to demand for AI chips.
“Earlier this year, we expected to have an additional US$250 million revenue increase from the CoWoS business. Now it looks like we will exceed that figure. AI demand will remain solid in the second half and through next year,” Wu said.
ASE is collaborating with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to increase supply of CoWoS packaging capacity to catch up with strong AI chip demand, ASE said.
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