00:00As one of the world's largest chip trade shows in the world, Semicon opened on Wednesday,
00:12organizers highlighted Taiwan's role in critical semiconductor technologies.
00:17The country provides the vast majority of the world's most advanced chips,
00:21which power phones, PCs, and the AI boom.
00:24One big focus for the show has been advanced packaging for chips.
00:28But what is that?
00:30Allč signal herkes has ěë claimed.
00:33Like five canine ŃĐ°ŃŃ
00:45to solve these problems.
00:49Modern chips are really a team of chips.
00:52Compute, memory, and other parts on interconnected layers
00:56in an arrangement known as 2.5D
00:59while so-called 3D packaging relies on vertical stacking of parts,
01:03bringing them closer for faster connections that use less power and space.
01:08There's still demand for chips getting smaller and cheaper, more efficient,
01:13especially now that AI is demanding more and more compute
01:16at a faster rate of improvement than ever before.
01:19And it's getting harder and harder at the same time
01:21to scale in the traditional way, which was 2D.
01:24Instead of making the floor plan smaller,
01:26why don't we add more floors to the skyscraper?
01:29Assembling and testing these tiny packages is highly technical,
01:32and AI demand has kept capacity tight.
01:35That's led some of Taiwan's chip-making giants like TSMC to expand their own capacity,
01:41aiming to more than double its popular Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate,
01:44or COOS, packaging output this year.
01:47It's outlined plans for two advanced packaging sites in the U.S. state of Arizona,
01:51while its American partner Amcor is also building a $2 billion packaging plant in the state.
01:57Despite those expansions, Taiwan remains the most important location in the world
02:02for a packaging market expected to reach nearly $80 billion by 2030,
02:08due to its localized ecosystem of the entire chip supply chain.
02:12Taiwan is the main focus to the world, based on no matter you can see here,
02:22CNP, PVD, listography, of course.
02:25And the reason why it's important, because TSMC helped them or co-work with them so much.
02:46So these companies will kind of grow with so much talent, so much intelligence in them.
02:54That close-in supply chain, tools, materials, packaging, and talent in one place,
03:00is why Taiwan still holds the lead in semiconductors,
03:03even as designs grow more complex and power efficiency becomes central.
03:07This year's Semi-Con is focused on key technologies that are the building blocks of the next wave of computing,
03:14and how one country is determined to secure its place at the heart of it all.
03:19Alex Chun and Chris Gorin for Taiwan Plus.
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