IPC Recommends Greater Focus on Electronics Needed for US-based AI Data Centers

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A new white paper from IPC, “AI-based Data Centers for the United States: Technologies, Supply Chains, and Resiliency Gaps,” explores the actions needed to improve the supply chain resiliency of U.S.-based artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and the electronics used in them.

AI servers are crucial for a variety of applications across different industries. In manufacturing, they are utilized for quality control such as inspecting products for defects using computer vision. Additionally, AI controls robotic systems for tasks such as assembly, welding, and packaging. These applications leverage AI servers' high computational power, data processing capabilities, and machine learning models. The strong and growing demand for these applications means the AI server market is expected to grow at a 12.3 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years. Electronic components and assemblies are critical to the functioning of such data centers. 

The most significant addition to the forecast is the addition of detail for accelerated servers, including GPU servers. The white paper analyzes several critical areas requiring government attention and investments to enable a more resilient AI server supply chain.

“When the high-performance computing market is added to the electronics portion of defense, aerospace, and space market, the overall North American market size is on the order of $70 billion to $90 billion,” says report coauthor Matt Kelly, IPC chief technology officer and vice president of technology solutions. “The size of these combined segments justifies government efforts to strengthen electronics capability and capacity to enable a resilient advanced packaging supply chain.”

The white paper, also coauthored by Devan Iyer, IPC senior director and chief strategist, advanced packaging, and Chris Mitchell, IPC vice president of global government relations, provides a “SWOT” analysis and recommendations on the infrastructure needed to produce AI-based servers and storage equipment for data centers and to strengthen associated electronics assembly capabilities in the U.S., with particular emphasis on these areas of importance:

• IC-substrate design and fabrication
• AI component assembly and test
• HBM chip assembly manufacturing
• PCB design/HDI fabrication
• PCBA assembly and test

“Several areas are identified that are critical and require significant government attention and investment to enable a stronger, more resilient domestic supply chain for next-generation AI server data centers from design to manufacture,” added Dr. Iyer.