AI Demand Drives Packaging Transformation, Some ASICs May Shift from CoWoS to EMIB Technology
2025-11-30 / Read about 0 minute
Author:小编   

Research by TrendForce indicates that the demand for heterogeneous integration in AI HPC (High-Performance Computing) relies on advanced packaging technologies, with TSMC's CoWoS being a key technology. However, as cloud service providers (CSPs) accelerate their in-house development of ASICs, the demand for packaging area continues to expand, leading to issues such as capacity shortages, reticle size limitations, and high costs for CoWoS. In response, CSPs like Google and Meta are beginning to consider switching to Intel's EMIB technology. EMIB eliminates the need for expensive and large-area interposers, instead using silicon bridge interconnects, which simplifies the overall structure, improves yield, and has fewer issues with the coefficient of thermal expansion. It also offers advantages in packaging size and is more cost-effective. Nevertheless, EMIB technology is limited by the area of the silicon bridge and routing density, resulting in relatively lower interconnect bandwidth, longer signal transmission distances, and slightly higher latency. Therefore, currently, only ASIC customers are actively evaluating its adoption. TrendForce predicts that by 2027, Google will incorporate EMIB for trial use in its TPUv9, while Meta is also actively assessing its planning for use in its MTIA products. In contrast, GPU suppliers such as NVIDIA and AMD, which have higher demands for bandwidth, transmission speed, and low latency, will continue to rely primarily on CoWoS as their main packaging solution. Additionally, TrendForce has released predictions for the top ten tech market trends in 2026, covering various fields such as AI servers, memory, optical communications, and energy storage for data centers.