Samsung Electro Mechanics Begins Mass Production of FC BGA for Qualcomm's "AI200," Expanding Collaboration into the Data Center Segment

Samsung Electro Mechanics has begun mass production of the package substrate that will be used in Qualcomm's first data center artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator. The supply deal is expected to expand the collaboration between the two companies from its existing footprint in mobile and PC into the data center segment.
According to reporting by ZDNet Korea on the 22nd, Samsung Electro Mechanics recently began mass production at its Busan plant of the flip chip ball grid array (FC BGA) used in Qualcomm's latest AI accelerator, the "AI200."
The AI200 is Qualcomm's first data center AI accelerator, unveiled this past October. It is specialized for AI inference workloads. It is equipped with Qualcomm's in house "Oryon" CPU and "Hexagon" NPU, paired with LPDDR5, a low power DRAM with strong power efficiency.
Qualcomm is targeting the second half of this year for the AI200's launch, and Samsung Electro Mechanics appears to have begun its FC BGA mass production in line with that timeline.
Because the FC BGA that Samsung Electro Mechanics is mass producing for Qualcomm's AI200 is an initial production volume, the volume is reportedly modest for now. Even so, the move is seen as meaningful in that the collaboration between Samsung Electro Mechanics and Qualcomm is expanding from its existing mobile and PC footprint into data center semiconductors. Until now, Samsung Electro Mechanics had supplied the package substrates used in Qualcomm's application processors (AP) for IT devices.
One semiconductor industry official said, "Because Samsung Electro Mechanics has had a long collaboration with Qualcomm, the supply deal for the AI accelerator FC BGA appears to have been concluded smoothly," adding, "Qualcomm plans to release the AI200 this year and the AI250 next year in succession, so Samsung Electro Mechanics can also enjoy the benefit of diversifying its customer base accordingly."
LG Innotek is also understood to be pursuing the supply chain for Qualcomm's AI200 FC BGA. Earlier, at a media event on the 17th, LG Innotek stated that "mass production of FC BGA used in server training and inference semiconductors is targeted for next year."
Another official said, "The AI200, which is specialized for AI inference, requires lower performance specifications for its FC BGA compared with high bandwidth memory (HBM) based AI accelerators," adding, "so the barrier to entry should be comparatively low even for LG Innotek, a latecomer in the FC BGA industry."
FC BGA is a package substrate that connects the semiconductor chip and the substrate via "flip chip bumps" (a method of flipping the chip over). Compared with the wire bonding that was mainly used in conventional packages, it has superior electrical and thermal characteristics, so demand is high, centered on high performance semiconductors.
The AI200 FC BGA is formed with internal layers in the low to mid teens. FC BGA is structured by stacking copper wired circuit layers and an insulator called Ajinomoto Build up Film (ABF) layer upon layer, and the higher the layer count, the higher the performance. For ultra high performance data center AI accelerators, more than 20 layers must be stacked.