It is no longer news that the IC substrate industry is in short supply, but with the expansion of new applications, the specifications of ABF substrates are continuously upgraded, and the tight supply situation is expected to continue. Fubon Investment Consulting estimates that in 2022 The annual gap rate of the ABF carrier board is still more than 20%.
ABF carrier boards are mainly used in high-speed computing chips such as CPU and GPU. In recent years, driven by emerging applications such as 5G, autonomous driving, cloud computing, and AI, the demand for more powerful processors has risen. In addition to chiplet advanced packaging technology, the demand for capacity has also increased relatively because new processors are usually larger in size and new packaging technologies require more layers of ABF carrier boards.
In addition, the substantial growth in the area of chip substrates used in new Apple laptops also offset concerns about slowing growth in the PC market. Apple's M1 Pro and M1 Max chips are used in the 14.2-inch MacBook Pro and 16.2-inch MacBook Pro laptops respectively. In addition to the introduction of the new chips into the SoC architecture, due to the increase in memory bandwidth and capacity, it is estimated that the required carrier board area will be larger than The previous-generation M1 chip is 90-250% larger, and the market share of Apple's laptops has increased, which also supports the demand for ABF.
Fubon Investment Consulting estimates that the growth rate of ABF demand in 2022 is as high as 53%. In contrast, the capacity expansion of carrier board manufacturers is only about 30%, so supply and demand in 2022 are still tight.
In addition to ABF, Fubon Investment Consulting also expects that BT carrier boards will also be in short supply in 2022. Although the demand for mobile phones in China has declined since the fourth quarter of last year, the momentum from new specifications can still promote the growth of BT substrates. Coupled with the expansion of consumer electronics applications, the prosperity of BT substrates is still not bleak.
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