Lee Jae-yong Inspects Japan Semiconductor Packaging Lab on Anniversary - 조선일보

Lee Jae-yong's decision to anchor Samsung's packaging R&D in Japan rather than Taiwan, China is itself a strategic statement. As chiplet architectures and 2.5D/3D stacking become the binding constraint on AI accelerator delivery, the geographic placement of packaging capacity now dictates who controls compute chip allocation through 2026. Japan's value is structural: ABF substrates, photoresists, and specialty gases remain concentrated in Shin-Etsu, Ajinomoto, and a handful of others. Embedding a lab inside that materials ecosystem compresses yield-ramp cycles by an estimated three to six months. The compliance calculus is equally deliberate—with BIS export controls tightening on advanced packaging equipment, positioning R&D in a non-adversarial jurisdiction sidesteps technology-transfer scrutiny while preserving policy headroom for future fab commitments. For TSMC, whose CoWoS capacity is already spoken for by Nvidia and AMD, a credible Samsung 2.5D loop would open a second-source slot for AMD and Broadcom. Intel's Foveros platform faces a sharper threat: Samsung's HBM3E yield edge combined with packaging autonomy could erode the pricing power of Intel's foundry-plus-packaging bundle. Within 18 months, expect Samsung to commit CoWoS-L-class capacity in Japan and push chiplet qualification with AMD. METI will likely replicate the Rapidus incentive playbook—tax credits and equipment subsidies in exchange for localized production. The structural decoupling of advanced packaging from Chinese supply chains will harden irreversibly in this window.