TSMC Outsources CoW Step of CoWoS to SPIL for the First Time

TapTechNews August 6th news, according to the Taiwanese media 'MoneyDJ Financial Network' report, TSMC has released the foundry order of the CoW step in CoWoS for the first time, which has been won by SPIL. SPIL will invest and build relevant production capacity in the Zhongke factory, and it is expected that the machines will enter in the second quarter of 2025 and increase production in the third quarter.

The report mentioned that the specific commissioned process comes from CoWoS-S, that is, CoWoS using high-performance and high-cost silicon interposer (TapTechNews note: SiInterposer).

TSMC's advanced packaging of CoWoS can be roughly divided into two steps of CoW and WoS, the former combines the chip with the interposer, while the latter is responsible for packaging the interposer together with the substrate. Among them, CoW is more complex and the profit is also more lucrative; WoS is relatively simple and the profit is lower.

TSMC has previously outsourced some WoS processes to OSAT enterprises to increase the overall production capacity of CoWoS; this time extending the outsourcing to the CoW stage is also affected by the continuous shortage of supply and demand of CoWoS.

As for SPIL, which undertakes the CoW foundry, it has already cooperated with NVIDIA and AMD in the advanced packaging field, and can not only provide packaging services similar to TSMC's CoWoS-S, but also has technical strength in the larger and more complex CoWoS-L.

In addition to SPIL, the two packaging and testing giants, ASE and Amkor, also have the ability to undertake TSMC's CoWoS outsourcing orders.