The provide of ajinomoto build-up movie (ABF) substrates has been tight, and can proceed to fall wanting demand within the second half of 2019, based on business sources.
Several suppliers together with Ibiden and Taiwan’s Unimicron Technology have plans to broaden manufacturing capability for ABF substrates, whereas many gamers proceed to resolve bottleneck points to scale up their output, stated the sources. Growth on the provision facet will nonetheless fail to meet up with demand progress, nonetheless, the sources continued.
The tight provide of ABF substrates can be attributable to restricted availabilities of the present manufacturing services for brand spanking new product designs, based on sources at IC substrate makers. Some outdated manufacturing services can’t be used for the manufacturing of ABF substrates which can be redesigned for extra complicated IC designs. As a outcome, ABF substrate suppliers see their provide fall wanting buyer demand however truly make the most of solely round 70% of their current capacities, the sources stated.
ABF substrate costs are prone to rise within the second half of 2019, when end-market demand can be pushed by seasonality, based on market observers.
The rising synthetic intelligence (AI), huge knowledge and different high-performance computing (HPC) purposes have began stimulating demand for ABF substrates, which was as soon as sluggish because of the stagnant PC market and an absence of server expertise breakthrough. Nevertheless, many ABF suppliers stay cautious about capability enlargement.