--- title: "TSMC’s HBM-Packaging Yield Issues Help Intel, Analysts Say" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/296874088.md" description: "Analysts suggest TSMC's yield and capacity bottlenecks in HBM packaging via CoWoS technology create opportunities for Intel to attract foundry customers. Intel's EMIB, ZAM, and XBM technologies offer alternatives that eliminate interposer risks. While Nvidia and AMD remain loyal to TSMC, Google and MediaTek are exploring diversification with Intel. Despite TSMC's enhancements, Intel's advanced packaging capabilities position it to capture market share amid supply constraints." datetime: "2026-08-25T07:30:03.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/296874088.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296874088.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/296874088.md) generator: "portal-rs" --- # TSMC’s HBM-Packaging Yield Issues Help Intel, Analysts Say //php echo do\_shortcode('\[responsivevoice\_button voice="US English Male" buttontext="Listen to Post"\]') ?> TSMC’s difficulty stitching together AI accelerators with high-bandwidth memory (HBM) on a single chip gives Intel a chance to win foundry customers, according to Counterpoint Research co-founder Neil Shah and other analysts commenting to EE Times. TSMC’s CoWoS advanced packaging tech, which has been a mainstay for AI customers like Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom for years, has become a production bottleneck, Shah said in an Aug. 17 report he provided to EE Times. “HBM’s reliance on TSMC’s CoWoS silicon interposers carries steep costs with thick packages, yield risk, capacity constraints and high scrap costs, thus creating an opening for credible alternatives,” Shah said. Intel’s EMIB advanced packaging that’s in production, as well as the company’s longer-term solutions like Z-angle memory (ZAM) and cross-batch memory (XBM), can help eliminate TSMC’s interposer problem for AI chipmakers, Shah added. “Large silicon dies have high defect rates. If the interposer fails during final packaging, the GPU die and all eight or more attached HBM stacks are ruined,” Shah said. “Scrapping an assembled package because of an interconnect or interposer defect destroys thousands of dollars in silicon at the final step.” ### Building strength Other analysts agreed that Intel is building strength. “Intel already has a number of important external customers for packaging with good growth potential over the next few years,” International Business Strategies CEO Handel Jones told EE Times. “Intel has good technology in packaging and is expanding capacity including in Santa Fe, New Mexico.” Jones declined to identify Intel Foundry customers, citing confidentiality agreements with clients. Intel’s EMIB is proven in high-volume products like the company’s Sapphire Rapids and Ponte Vecchio processors, as well as custom accelerator designs, Shah said. Counterpoint said its channel checks suggest Google and AI ASIC design partner MediaTek will use Intel Foundry’s EMIB-T for Google’s upcoming TPUv9t (Humufish), TPUv9t+ (Triggerfish), and beyond. Intel still faces hurdles, according to Counterpoint. “TSMC and HBM remains the safest, most flexible generalist platform for simultaneous training and inference,” Shah said. “Nvidia and AMD have so far showed no inclination to diversify. At the same time, we see Google \[with MediaTek\] looking to diversify, which would be huge as it \[Google\] is the second largest accelerator company in the world.” In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple may order chips from Intel, a deal prompted by U.S. President Donald Trump. The Trump administration took a 10% stake in Intel last year. ### Packaging Advanced packaging has extended the benefits of Moore’s Law by allowing multiple dies and chiplets to be integrated into increasingly dense packages. Nvidia’s latest AI chips integrate hundreds of billions of transistors across two compute dies in a single package. From a performance and power-consumption perspective, enhancements in packaging tech will be more important than the migration of leading foundries like TSMC and Intel from 2.0-nm to 1.4-nm chip processes, Jones said. Intel’s chance depends on timely execution and support from companies like Google and MediaTek as well as Tier-1 memory players, Counterpoint said. Intel’s EMIB, together with ZAM and XBM, will be factors behind the transition, according to the research firm. In February, Intel and SoftBank subsidiary Saimemory announced ZAM, a stacked DRAM technology. ZAM would serve as an energy-efficient alternative to HBM. In the longer term, XBM would use back-end-of-line (BEOL) thin-film transistors and serial UCIe links to eliminate interposers. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan recently telegraphed memory’s increasing importance to the company. ### Staying competitive TSMC is enhancing CoWoS to stay competitive, Counterpoint said. CoWoS-L is architecturally similar to EMIB, using small, localized silicon bridges for high-density die-to-die routing, the Counterpoint report noted. Intel embeds an EMIB bridge directly inside an organic substrate cavity while TSMC embeds the integration bridge into an intermediate redistribution layer (RDL) in a silicon wafer layer before attaching it to a substrate, the report said. “I’m inclined to believe TSMC has excellent yields for its CoWoS processes,” analyst Mike Demler told EE Times. “The newer CoWos-L may have had some early yield issues, and there were reports of some delays with \[Nvidia’s\] Vera Rubin, but I’m not aware of any current yield issues.” Intel’s chance to take AI chip customers away from TSMC looks good, Demler said. “EMIB eliminates the interposer, and Foveros \[Intel’s 3D chip-stacking tech\] offers die-stacking and other features TSMC doesn’t have,” he said. “If nothing else, Intel has an opportunity to pick up customers because of TSMC’s capacity shortage.” TSMC and Intel didn’t respond to EE Times before publication of this article. * * * ##### Read also: IBM, Synopsys Move Toward 1.4-nm Node With Heat-Modeling Tech TSMC Will Struggle to Meet AI Demand for Years, Analysts Say D-Wave Buys Quantum Circuits in Shift to Higher Gear TSMC to Lead Rivals at 2-nm Node, Analysts Say AI AND BIG DATA, CHIPLETS, HBM, SOC INTEL, INTEL FOUNDRY, TSMC ### Related Stocks - [INTC.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/INTC.US.md) - [INTW.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/INTW.US.md) - [04335.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/04335.HK.md) - [AMD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AMD.US.md) - [AMUU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AMUU.US.md) - [AMDD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AMDD.US.md) - [AMDL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AMDL.US.md) - [AMDG.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AMDG.US.md) - [DAMD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/DAMD.US.md) - [AMDY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AMDY.US.md) - [AMDW.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AMDW.US.md) - [LINT.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/LINT.US.md) - [INYY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/INYY.US.md) - [SMH.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SMH.US.md) - [SOXX.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SOXX.US.md) - [SOXL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SOXL.US.md) - [SOXQ.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SOXQ.US.md) - [XSD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/XSD.US.md) - [PSI.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/PSI.US.md) - [FTXL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/FTXL.US.md) - [TSM.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/TSM.US.md) - [NVDA.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDA.US.md) - [AVGO.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AVGO.US.md) - [GOOGL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/GOOGL.US.md) - [GOOG.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/GOOG.US.md) - [AAPL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AAPL.US.md) - [9984.JP](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/9984.JP.md) - [SFTBY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SFTBY.US.md) - [NVD.DE](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVD.DE.md) ## Related News & Research - [Xiaomi Takes Another Page From Apple](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296821772.md) - [Xiaomi unveils Xring O3 as it expands in-house chip push](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296867086.md) - [Huge, Unusual Put and Call Option Volume in Intel - Investors Bullish as INTC Drops](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296817055.md) - [Google Is Reportedly Working with AMD for Its New TPU. 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