In the past, the semiconductor industry chain ran on a clearly defined division of labor: chip design companies defined the products, foundries manufactured them, and packaging and testing houses handled the downstream processing. Each stage connected to the others through orders and shared technical standards. But the explosion in demand for AI computing power has broken the traditional operating rules of chip manufacturing.
Chips keep getting larger, and advanced process nodes and advanced packaging keep getting more complex. Whether an AI chip can be delivered on time no longer depends on any single production stage. Wafers, HBM, packaging substrates and testing can each become a bottleneck. AI chip manufacturing can no longer be completed by simply following the old division of labor step by step. Under pressure from computing demand, the whole industry chain is reshaping its production logic.