Among the various products for circuit boards around the world in 2020, the output value of substrates has accounted for a total of 16%. On the other hand, the demands of 5G mobile-phone chips and the rapid growth of new applications such as SiP and AiP have increased the demands for advanced processes; thus, the global annual growth rate has reached a high of 25%. The main reasons for such high growth can be attributed to: 

1. The growth of IC shipments worldwide have persisted. 

2. ABF substrates with high unit prices are in high demand because of the need for 5G base stations and high-performance computers. 

3. 5G mobile phones have created demands for AiP substrate.

 

According to the research firm, the manufacturing capacity for wafer and substrate are short in supply, while substrate growth rates around the world in 2021 are estimated to remain at a high growth rate of 19%. This ranks top among all types of circuit board products.

 

In 2021, it is estimated that smartphones will be the most eye-catching among all 5G terminal products. 5G smartphones adopt AiP (Antenna-in-Package) to improve the signal reception capability of mobile phones. On the other hand, AiP modules have short antennas, RF chips, etc. are packaged in one module; thus also creating the demand for AiP substrate. In addition, the application of 5G terminals has spread to various IoT devices which also require AiP, thus causing the demand for substrate to rapidly increase.
 

From the perspective of layer numbers, ABF substrate was a technology formerly with two to four layers on top and bottom. However, most of them now have at least eight layers each; an equivalent of the requirement for layer numbers amounts to at least 16 layers for a whole substrate. In terms of area size, there are already many new products with an area size that has reached about four times that of previous ABF substrates. In the future, it is going to be a trend that substrate will be geared towards large-sized areas of 10 times or more for development. As such, more scrap risks will be increased in the process of build-up. Additionally, this will present major challenges given that a single-product area will be substantially increased to the configuration and yield of the production line. Such a change will greatly reduce the operating efficiency of previous production lines, while the substrates - such as heterogeneously integrated chips - would then consume much of the production capacity. Taking the yield factor into consideration, difficulty can increase more than a hundred times than that of the current ABF substrate.