Ibiden Co, the dominant supplier of chip package substrates used in Nvidia Corp’s cutting-edge semiconductors, might need to dial up the pace of production capacity increases to keep up with demand, company CEO Koji Kawashima said.
Sales of the 112-year-old company’s artificial intelligence (AI)-use substrates are robust, with customers buying up all that Ibiden has, Kawashima said.
That demand is likely to last at least through next year, he added.
Photo: Bloomberg
Ibiden is building a new substrate factory in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, which is expected to go online at 25 percent production capacity around the last quarter of next year before reaching 50 percent by March 2026.
However, that might not be enough, Kawashima said.
The company is in talks about when to get the remaining 50 percent capacity online, he said in an interview.
“Our customers have concerns,” he said. “We’re already being asked about our next investment and the next capacity expansion.”
Ibiden’s clients include Intel Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Samsung Electronics Co and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), as well as Nvidia. Many of them consult with the Japanese company early in product development, because the substrates — which help transmit signals from semiconductors to the circuit board — need to be tailored for each chip. Substrates must be made to withstand the heat of an Nvidia graphics processing unit to form an AI chip package complete with components such as memory.
Intel once comprised about 70 percent to 80 percent of Ibiden’s revenue from chip package substrates. That fell to about 30 percent in the fiscal year ended March, as the US chipmaker struggled to execute a turnaround that recently saw the ousting of its CEO Pat Gelsinger.
In October, Ibiden revised down its profit outlook after sluggish demand for components used in general purpose servers outweighed AI server-related growth. While noting it was important to expand business with chipmakers other than Intel, Kawashima said he was confident Intel would bounce back.
“Intel’s overall technology is very sophisticated,” he said. “Intel raised us up and opened so many doors. Our relationship with Intel will always be our treasure, and Intel will forever be an important customer.”
With many foreign chipmakers unwilling to transfer their latest technology to the US, Intel is likely to play a key role in Washington’s goal to boost cutting-edge semiconductor production capabilities at home, Kawashima said.
Ibiden has no manufacturing facilities in the US.
It has no plans to build any due to the cost of labor and logistics, irrespective of US president-elect Donald Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on a wide range of products, Kawashima said.
All of Nvidia’s AI semiconductors now use Ibiden’s substrates, although Taiwanese rivals such as Unimicron Technology Corp (欣興電子) are eyeing the field. However, it would not be easy to break Ibiden’s position as dominant supplier, Toyo Securities Co analyst Hideki Yasuda said.
“Nvidia’s AI chips need sophisticated substrates, and Ibiden is the only one that can mass produce them at a good production yield,” he said. “Taiwanese competitors won’t be able to take Ibiden’s share away by much.”
AI semiconductors earn more than 15 percent of Ibiden’s sales of about ￥370 billion (US$2.35 billion), with that percentage expected to rise further.
Nvidia said it has begun full production of its next-generation Blackwell chips after encountering some initial technical challenges.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS