Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) has reportedly landed a big advanced packaging order from Qualcomm and is nearing mass production.
According to a report from Economic Daily News, the pure-play foundry’s high-end interposers are tailored for Qualcomm’s IC and memory capacitance needs and have passed electrical testing and entered trial production.
Last week, reports emerged that UMC was looking to move beyond its traditional mature process technologies and into more advanced nodes and packaging technologies. Part of this was a potential expansion of its relationship with Intel Corp. and the development of a new packaging facility.
According to the report, the interposers feature 1,500 nF/mm2 capacitors and are expected to be in mass production in the first quarter of 2026.
Apparently, Qualcomm and UMC have been collaborating on the advanced packaging for high-performance computing for markets like:
- AI PCs
- Automotive
- AI servers
UMC is potentially looking at different, more advanced technologies due to increased price pressure coming from Chinese foundries that are in the mature node market. Given the ability of these foundries in China to offer steep discounts on semiconductors, UMC is potentially looking at new ways of generating revenue including offering advanced packaging technologies to vendors in edge technologies.
