Apple reportedly is in talks with a Korean substrate maker for the supply of ABF-based FC-BGA substrates for processing Apple Car chip solutions, sparking concerns about which IC substrate suppliers will eventually contribute components to Apple's EV, according to industry sources.

It seems plausible that Apple might seek ABF substrates from a Korean substrate maker that could give full capacity support for Apple Car production, the sources said.

Because Taiwan's major ABF substrate suppliers (Unimicron Technology, Nan Ya PCB, and Kinsus Interconnect Technology) and their peers in Japan and Austria have their capacity almost fully booked by major vendors of CPUs, GPUs, networking chips, FPGAs, and other HPC chips for the next few years, they can hardly have extra ABF capacity for Apple Car demand, the sources continued.

ABF substrates can be used for cars or for HPC chips, but car-use substrates have lower layer counts and smaller areas than HPC-use substrates, which limits demand at the moment. This, coupled with stringent and time-consuming validations for car-use ABF substrates, has deterred existing major IC substrate makers from building dedicated production lines for Apple Car or other EV vendors, the sources stressed.

At the moment, Taiwan's Unimicron lands the majority of orders for ABF substrates needed to process Apple's M1 chips series. The company and domestic peers Na Ya PCB and Kinsus are all optimistic about demand for automotive electronics applications in the coming years, with Nan Ya even confident that automotive applications will be the second largest growth driver for ABF substrate sales, next to only networking applications, the sources added.

By DIGITIMES