Advantest Corp, one of the world’s major chip tester suppliers, yesterday said that the chip testing equipment market could regain growth this year, driven by rising demand for advanced testing services for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance-computing systems-on-chips and memory chips.
The frenzy of interest in ChatGPT and other AI-training applications has caused a surge in AI chip demand, but AI chip shipments have lagged due to supply constraints on advanced packaging capacity, Advantest Taiwan Inc chairman Alex Wu (吳萬錕) told reporters on the sidelines of the company’s annual media gathering in Taipei yesterday.
As the supply of advanced packaging capacity is set to improve this year, the volume of chips used in AI training systems and servers is also to increase, leading to growing demand for chip testing services and testing gear, Wu said.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said in October last year that it would more than double its advanced packaging or chip-on-wafer-on-substrate technology capacity this year compared with 2023, with the aim of catching up with high demand from customers such as Nvidia Corp.
Growing AI use is pushing the limits of chip complexity and advanced packaging, boosting testing time and the demand for chip testers to guarantee performance and quality, Wu said.
“We are looking at growth this year for the global testing equipment market, in line with the projections of most market analysts,” Wu said.
The global chip-testing tool market is set to return to an annual expansion of 17 percent this year, or US$8.1 billion, Advantest said, citing TechInsights Inc’s projection.
The market was estimated to shrink 15.8 percent year-on-year to US$6.9 billion, TechInsights said.
Growth would also be fueled by rapidly growing demand for high-bandwidth memory like DDR5 DRAM chips to support bigger data storage for AI inferencing, boosting testing services for such high-density and high-speed memory chips, Advantest said.
Additionally, Advantest is to benefit from the world’s race to build domestic chip supplies, it said. Since TSMC is expanding capacity overseas to Japan, the US and Europe, the chipmaker is likely to build more in-house chip testing capacity in Japan or Taiwan when the chip production scale expands, the company said.
Geographically, Asia remains the most active market, Wu said.
China has outpaced Taiwan and become the biggest market for Advantest since the second quarter of the company’s 2023 fiscal year. China accounted for 33 percent of the company’s revenue during the quarter, while Taiwan made up 16 percent, the company said.
Demand from China is huge, given that a large number of new chip manufacturing and outsourced semiconductor-assembly-and-test plants are scheduled to start operation in the following years, even though those chipmakers are concentrating on expanding mature chip technologies, rather than cutting-edge technologies, Wu said.
Advantest is following US chip export controls. The Tokyo-based testing equipment maker had a more than 50 percent share of the world chip testing equipment market.
Semiconductor shares in China surged yesterday after Reuters reported the US had ordered chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers, which investors believe could accelerate Beijing’s self-reliance efforts. TSMC yesterday started to suspend shipments of certain sophisticated chips to some Chinese clients after receiving a letter from the US Department of Commerce imposing export restrictions on those products, Reuters reported on Sunday, citing an unnamed source. The US imposed export restrictions on TSMC’s 7-nanometer or more advanced designs, Reuters reported. Investors figured that would encourage authorities to support China’s industry and bought shares
TECH WAR CONTINUES: The suspension of TSMC AI chips and GPUs would be a heavy blow to China’s chip designers and would affect its competitive edge Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, is reportedly to halt supply of artificial intelligence (AI) chips and graphics processing units (GPUs) made on 7-nanometer or more advanced process technologies from next week in order to comply with US Department of Commerce rules. TSMC has sent e-mails to its Chinese AI customers, informing them about the suspension starting on Monday, Chinese online news outlet Ijiwei.com (愛集微) reported yesterday. The US Department of Commerce has not formally unveiled further semiconductor measures against China yet. “TSMC does not comment on market rumors. TSMC is a law-abiding company and we are
FLEXIBLE: Taiwan can develop its own ground station equipment, and has highly competitive manufacturers and suppliers with diversified production, the MOEA said The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday disputed reports that suppliers to US-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) had been asked to move production out of Taiwan. Reuters had reported on Tuesday last week that Elon Musk-owned SpaceX had asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan given geopolitical risks and that at least one Taiwanese supplier had been pushed to relocate production to Vietnam. SpaceX’s requests place a renewed focus on the contentious relationship Musk has had with Taiwan, especially after he said last year that Taiwan is an “integral part” of China, sparking sharp criticism from Taiwanese authorities. The ministry said
US President Joe Biden’s administration is racing to complete CHIPS and Science Act agreements with companies such as Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co, aiming to shore up one of its signature initiatives before US president-elect Donald Trump enters the White House. The US Department of Commerce has allocated more than 90 percent of the US$39 billion in grants under the act, a landmark law enacted in 2022 designed to rebuild the domestic chip industry. However, the agency has only announced one binding agreement so far. The next two months would prove critical for more than 20 companies still in the process
RSS