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<CEO Duck-hyun Chang>

Samsung Electro-Mechanics is investing an additional 300 billion KRW in flip chip ball grid array (FC-BGA) substrates. The accumulated investment is about 2 trillion KRW in FC-BGA from the end of last year. FC-BGA substrate is a semiconductor substrate that connects the semiconductor chip to the main substrate. They used in central processing unit (CPU) and graphic processing unit (GPU) for PC, server, and network, and because of demand of contact-free method, demand of FC-BGA is spiking.

The investment will be used in Busan·Sejong sites and FC-BGA facilities in Vietnamese production plant. They are actively responding to the increase in demand for package substrates due to semiconductor performance enhancement and market growth. Samsung Electro-Mechanics will be the first in South Korea to begin mass production of server package substrates within this year. Their strategy is to strengthen their position as a global top three and solidify it by expanding high-end products such as servers·networks·electronics.

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The market condition is also positive. The semiconductor industry is concentrating on the development of improved substrates to respond to high performance such as robots, metaverses, and autonomous driving. In high-performance fields such as big data and artificial intelligence (AI), high-end package substrates are required. These package substrates have the highest level of difficulty such as micro-circuit implementation, enlargement, and number of layers among substrate products.

If the package substrate mounted on a smartphone is compared to an apartment, a high-end class products used for servers requires high technology like building a skyscraper with more than 100 floors, making it difficult for latecomers to enter.

In the package substrate market, it is expected that the demand for high-end products will increase as the performance of CPU·GPU semiconductors and multi-chip packaging are improving due to the development of server and PC performance.

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<Samsung Electro-Mechanics’ semiconductor package substrate products>
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<View of Samsung Electro-Mechanics Busan site>

Samsung Electro-Mechanics announced that the demand for high-end package substrates from global top customers is increasing. Because of expansion of autonomous driving, the demand for package substrates for electric vehicles is also increasing. CEO of Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Duck-hyun Chang, said on the 22nd, “As AI becomes a core technology in the future IT environment such as robots, cloud, metaverse, and autonomous driving, it is becoming more important for high-performance semiconductor manufacturers such as AI semiconductors to secure a technical package substrate partner. By using new concept of package substrate technology such as SoS (System on Substrate), Samsung Electro-Mechanics will become a 'game changer' in the high-tech field.”

Samsung Electro-Mechanics started the substrate business in 1991 and supplied products to world-renowned companies. They are currently in the first position in terms of market share and technology for the semiconductor package substrate for flagship mobile application processor (AP). By utilizing their Busan, Sejong, and Vietnamese production subsidiaries, Samsung Electro-Mechanics plans to strengthen their customer responsiveness by using them as outposts for package substrate production.

By Staff Reporter So-ra Park (srpark@etnews.com)