At the 2023 e4ds Semiconductor Packaging Day, a forecast emerged that the semiconductor market may not recover easily this year.

The 2023 e4ds Semiconductor Packaging Day, organized by e4ds News and hosted by Channel 5 Korea, was held on the 28th at the Korea Conference Center in Gangnam-gu. Organized to share global semiconductor industry trends and advanced packaging technology trends, the event featured presentations on cutting-edge semiconductor packaging trends by participants including Hanyang University, Intel, Nepes, Applied Materials, the Next Generation Intelligent Semiconductor Business Group, and Hyundai Motor Securities.

Noh Geun-chang, head of the research center at Hyundai Motor Securities, said at the conference that day, “There is an expectation that the semiconductor market will recover starting from the fourth quarter of this year, but it may be difficult to recover within this year, and we may have to look ahead to the first or second half of next year.”

The foundry market is expected to see a 5% decrease in total revenue in 2023 compared to the previous year, with revenue declines anticipated for both major foundry companies, Samsung and TSMC. Concerns have emerged that the semiconductor industry may face an L-shaped recession, as recent trend analysis suggests a sharp decline in demand for servers from China and the possibility that server replacement cycles in the general server market, including U.S. cloud providers, may be delayed due to investments in supercomputers.

On the other hand, he explained that in the server market, cloud service providers are feeling the burden of the high Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of GPUs and are moving toward reducing GPU usage through NPUs. With many big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta developing NPUs, and domestic telecommunications companies staking their future on AI semiconductor development, Center Director Noh noted that "the AI semiconductor market will be a key point to watch."

Amidst this, as the physical limitations of microfabrication processes are reached and the technological vision of heterogeneous integrated packaging, known as chiplets, takes over industry hegemony, the demand for Advanced Packaging, including server packaging for NVIDIA GPUs, is rising day by day.

Center Director Noh stated, “With chiplets, we can improve yield and gain a competitive edge in unit prices,” adding that the global semiconductor industry is currently focusing on advanced packaging to enhance chip performance. Heterogeneous chip integration can reduce the defect rate during the manufacturing process and drastically lower chip manufacturing costs by using advanced nodes only for some necessary parts and interconnecting them with chips using previous generation nodes that have high stability.

In heterogeneous integration, issues can arise regarding node differences, connection methods, and communication methods between dies, making it important to have the capability to respond to them. As the need for mutually compatible standards has emerged, the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) consortium has been rapidly gaining prominence since last year.

With the establishment of semiconductor packaging standards becoming a reality, the three major semiconductor companies and more than 80 leading semiconductor companies have joined the consortium. In Korea, Nepes is also known to have joined UCIe.

In terms of the development trends of the semiconductor industry, servers, smartphones, and mobility are driving the industry, and Center Director Noh was particularly paying attention to the trend of electrification in automobiles. As one car contains the equivalent of semiconductors found in 10 smartphones, competition to capture the automotive semiconductor market is expected to intensify.
Meanwhile, the 2023 e4ds Semiconductor Packaging Day was attended by Center Director Noh Geun-chang, Nepes Semiconductor Research Institute Director Kang In-soo, Intel Korea Director Park Sung-soon, Applied Materials Senior Manager Fabier Shu, Hanyang University Professor Yoo Bong-young, and Next-Generation Intelligent Semiconductor Business Group Team Leader Han Kyu-min, who shared insights on the cutting-edge technology, policies, and prospects of the semiconductor packaging industry.