EIPC Winter Conference 2023: Day 1 Review

Estimated reading time: 18 minutes

Substrate Market
The second presentation in the Keynote Session, “IC Substrate: Key Element of the Packaging Industry,” came from Emilie Jolivet, director of the Semiconductor, Memory and Computing Division at Yole Développement in France. She has surveyed technology and market trends, and shared an abundance of forecasts and statistics.

She described the increasing requirement for laminate IC substrates, commenting that since 2018, there has been an overwhelming demand for flip-chip BGA and flip-chip CSP substrates from 5G and high-performance computing. Significant technology turning points have been the change in IC substrate material from ceramic to organic and in interconnection from wire bonding to flip-chip. During the pandemic period, the high demand for a whole range of electronic equipment, from personal devices to data centres using more advanced packages, has led to an unprecedented shortage of advanced substrates. 

Her advanced packaging technology roadmap indicated bump I/O pitch to be scaling much faster than ball I/O pitch, in turn driving finer redistribution layer lines and spaces at IC substrate package level, trending toward 2 microns with bump pitches of 40 microns and ball pitches of 300 microns by 2027. 

Jolivet estimated that the global advanced substrate market value will grow from $15.8 billion in 2021 to $29.6 billion in 2027, mainly driven by the high demand in mobile and consumer, automotive and mobility, and telecom and infrastructure. It is forecast that advanced packaging revenue in the total semiconductor market will exceed traditional packaging revenue by 2026. The advanced packaging market was worth $37.5 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to $65 billion in 2027. The flip-chip platform, which includes flip-chip BGA, flip-chip CSP, and flip-chip SiP, will have the highest market share, and the highest growth rates will come from embedded-die, 2.5D/3D, and fan-out packaging.

The period from 2021-22 saw unprecedented investment in capacity, mostly in Asia. Of a total of more than $16 billion worldwide, by far the largest proportion was in China, followed by Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, with comparatively small investments in Austria and the U.S. 

She commented that the main substrate technology trend is to increase complexity with larger areas, more layers and finer pitches, and lines and spaces by adopting processes like SAP, mSAP, or aSAP. Embedded die technology will enable multiple die embedding to reach more applications. 

Energy
The final keynote presentation, “A Charcoal Sketch of the Energy System,” was by Gerrit Jan Schaeffer, general manager of EnergyVille, a collaboration of Belgian research partners in the fields of sustainable energy and intelligent energy systems.

“The world is changing,” he began, as he indicated how world population, world energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions are expected to progress from 1990 to 2050. The population will increase from 5.3 to 9.7 billion and energy consumption will increase from 8,000 to 21,000 million tons of oil equivalent per year, but carbon dioxide emissions must be be reduced from 22.4 billion tons per year to net-zero in order to minimise the rise in global temperature. 

He explained what a global net-zero energy system w look like by considering the four sectors that have accounted for more than 90% of domestic, energy-related CO₂ emissions in the EU in 2020: mobility, industry, buildings, and the electric power sector. He analyzed each one in detail and demonstrated how they would interact.

“What about hydrogen?” he asked, referring to proposals to employ hydrogen as a tool for decarbonisation. He showed a chart known as the Hydrogen Ladder, which was created by Michael Liebreich in an attempt to rationalise suggested applications; they ranged from “unavoidable” in green at the top to “uncompetitive” in red at the bottom. He is a firm advocate of decarbonising the planet as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, but is strongly against using clean hydrogen in sectors where there are cheaper and more efficient electric solutions, such as cars and domestic heating.

The estimated global hydrogen need in 2050:

• Unavoidable applications, 350–400 million tons
• Industrial applications, 175 million tons
• Sipping, 95 million tons;
• Aviation, 90 million tons

It is estimated that between 20,000 and 25,000 terawatt hours of green electricity will be required to produce this amount of hydrogen, bearing in mind that current global power production is about 27,000 terawatt hours. Schaeffer’s conclusion was to avoid hydrogen where and if possible, because massive amounts will be needed already for the hard-to-abate sectors. 

Sustainability
The theme of the following conference session was “Environment and Sustainability,” and it was moderated by Alun Morgan. 

The first contributor was EIPC board member Stig Källman, master developer component engineer PCB with Ericsson in Sweden. Unable to attend in person, he provided a video presentation titled, “Ericsson Supplier Climate Action,” describing how conducting business responsibly is at the foundation of Ericsson’s approach to sustainability and corporate responsibility. 

He outlined the company’s Responsible Sourcing Environment Program, a code of conduct for business partners that supports and encourages suppliers to conduct their own businesses in ways that minimise negative environmental impacts for their own operations and in their supply chains. Based on scientific evidence and in alignment with the Business Ambition for 1.5°C, Ericsson’s target is to halve emissions by 2030 and to drive action on the pathway to a net-zero value chain by 2040.

Part of the code of conduct for Ericsson’s procurement process is a section on climate change mitigation that requires all business partners to develop and implement plans and targets to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint, adopt and publicly disclose its targets for halving absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and offers guidance and support on how to proceed. 

Ericsson’s own activities to reduce CO₂ include energy efficiency, design for reduced size and weight, use of materials with reduced density or enhanced characteristics, improved manufacturing methods and supplier selection based on low CO_{2.Page 2 of 4}

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