GAPT Holding Limited shares directly or indirectly hold 100% equity of Riyueguang Semiconductor (Weihai) Co., Ltd., Suzhou Riyuexin Semiconductor Co., Ltd. and Rirong Semiconductor (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., with a price of 1.228 billion US dollars and a gain of 621 million US dollars; The total price of shares of Sunmoon Semiconductor (Kunshan) Co., Ltd. was about 232 million US dollars, and it was 7.78 million US dollars. In total, the profit of this transaction is about 629 million US dollars.
Chinese mainland factories not included in this transaction include Silicon Products Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. and Wuxi Tongzhi Microelectronics Co., Ltd..
The sale of the four factories is the first proposal to integrate the Group’s packaging and testing resources, optimize the strategic layout of the mainland market and the effective use of resources after the merger of SPIL, so as to strengthen the overall competitive strength in the mainland market. At the same time, the profits will strengthen the company’s advanced packaging technology research and development and capacity building in Taiwan Province.
Since its establishment in 1984, Sunmoon Investment Control has been focusing on providing complete packaging and testing services to semiconductor customers around the world, including integrated services for chip front-end testing and wafer needle testing to back-end packaging, materials and finished product testing; Through its subsidiary Huanlong Electric, we provide customers with a complete overall solution for electronic manufacturing services; In 1997, it entered into a strategic alliance with TSMC, the leading foundry of wafers. The wafers manufactured by IDM or Fabless in TSMC were directly delivered to Sunmoon for packaging and testing, which greatly shortened the time from production to market and enabled Sunmoon to expand rapidly. In 2003, Sunmoon surpassed Amkor and became the global leader in semiconductor packaging and testing. After the acquisition of Silicon Precision in 2015, its revenue was twice that of Amway Technology, further consolidating its position as the first in the industry.
Why sell four factories?
Since its establishment in 1989, Sunmoon has been adopting the expansion policy of "Buy in buy buy", and at the same time, it has rapidly upgraded its packaging technology. Why in today’s excellent industrial situation, Sunmoon suddenly sold a number of factories in production.
According to the Institute of Core Thought, the reasons why Sunmoon sold four factories are as follows:
First, at present, the main customers of the four factories are basically located overseas, which may be affected by the Sino-US trade war. In 2020, the global revenue of Sunlight Investment Control is about RMB 64.3 billion, and the operating profit is RMB 6.4 billion. The total revenue of the four factories of Sunlight Shanghai, Sunlight Kunshan, Suzhou Riyuexin and Sunlight Weihai only accounts for 6.7% of the global revenue, and the total operating profit accounts for about 6.4%. The sale of the four factories has little impact on the revenue and profit of Sunlight Investment Control.
Second, the packaging types of Rirong Shanghai, Suzhou Riyuexin and Riyueguang Kunshan are mainly FBGA, BGA, QFN, leadframe and SO, while Riyueguang Weihai Factory mainly uses discrete device packaging. However, domestic companies such as Changdian Technology, Tongfu Microelectronics and Huatian Technology have done very well in the above packaging types, and Sunmoon has been difficult to compete in the domestic market.
Thirdly, the Suzhou factory of Silicon Products Technology has been retained, which is the most advanced factory in Chinese mainland, and has the production capacity of wafer BUMP and FCCSP.
Fourth, Sunmoon is optimistic about the miniaturized system-in-package market, with advanced packaging layout. In 2020, the revenue of SiP packaging controlled by Sunlight Investment reached 3.5 billion US dollars, up 50% compared with 2019, accounting for about 40% of the total revenue of the whole year.
Force advanced packaging
Semiconductor industry is a mature industry, and it will be the biggest in the next 10 years. Strengthening competitiveness is the only way to develop. Sunmoon+silicon products) have joined forces to achieve higher market share in System-in-Package (SiP) and Fan-Out package.
Fan-out packaging technology is becoming more and more mature, and has been mass-produced and applied to the radio frequency (RF)/ power management (PMIC)/ application processor (AP) and storage ASIC/ASIC of mobile phones. With the finer line spacing and heterogeneous integration, the stacking of single chip and multi-chip on the substrate requires the application of system-level packaging technology.
The business opportunities caused by the epidemic have increased the demand for cloud server chips and promoted the sales of electronic terminal products. With advanced packaging and testing capability and homogeneous/heterogeneous chip integration packaging and testing technology, Sunmoon Investment Control uses Chiplet design architecture to achieve the high integration and high performance requirements required by terminal electronic products by stacking 2D, 2.5D and 3D.
Due to the need of epidemic prevention, various zero-touch applications and 5G enabled, combined with the development of artificial intelligence Internet of Things (AIoT), AR, VR and MR are constantly changing the way people interact in the virtual world, and driving the Immersive Experience to serve business opportunities. SEMICON China 2021 International Semiconductor Exhibition is a successful case. In response to COVID-19′ s epidemic prevention needs, it was presented in the form of an integrated exhibition platform with physical exhibition and online exhibition.
With the development of application products such as 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), digital consumer electronics and Wearable Device, chips must meet the functional requirements of applications, and move towards the evolution trend of low price, multi-function, high efficiency, high integration, lower cost, more advanced packaging technology and more complex chip testing technology requirements.
Sunmoon Investment Control continues to research and develop high-level packaging and testing technologies such as 2.5D-3IC, SiP, Fan-out/Fan-in WLP, Flip Chip, Bumping and Optical Package, so as to provide customers with high-quality new products.
In response to the development of 5G high-frequency communication, the fan-out packaging technology has been highly anticipated. In addition to the layout of mobile phone application processors, on the basis of fan-out packaging, it is developed towards BB Modem, RF Transceiver and RF FEM, and in antenna package (Antenna in Package；; AiP), the signal integrity and performance of fan-out package AiP in high frequency millimeter wave (mmWave) transmission are good.
There are six fan-out packaging solutions for Sunmoon: aWLB, M-Series, FOCoS, FOPoP, FOSiP and Panel FO.
AWLB: Wafer-level packaging technology, which has been mass-produced since 2009, is a very mature technology. It integrates multi-chip and stacked chip flexibly, and has the advantages of low power consumption and good heat dissipation. It is applied to Baseband, radio frequency (RF), Codec and automotive radar.
M-Series: Compared with aWLB, M-Series provides better reliability with backside laminated film, 6-sided protection and RDL contact on Cu stud surface, and better die shift and warpage control, which are applied to Baseband, radio frequency (RF), power management (PMIC) and Codec.
FOCoS(Fan Out Chip on Substrate): a high-density wafer docking solution, with better telecom efficiency, High I/O >1000, line spacing/line width of 2/2 um, without interposer, saving costs, and using the existing flip-chip packaging technology, the time to market for mobile phones, tablets and server products can be quickly provided. For the solution of multi-chip integration, Chip last FOCoS and Chip first FOCoS are provided according to the characteristics and number of chips to be integrated, and the 2um/2um line width and line spacing are used as heterogeneous integration solutions, which will be cheaper than 2.5D Silicon Interposer.
FOPoP: mainly used in mobile phone processor chips and integrated with memory chips.
FOSiP: mainly used in RF, FEM, MCU and power devices.
Panel FO (Panel Fan-out Package: The production line will be completed by the end of 2019, and mass-produced in the second half of 2020. It will be used in radio frequency (RF), RF front-end module (FEM), Power supply (Power) and Server (Server).
Heterogeneous integration will bring a new wave of growth for global packaging and testing companies, and Sun Moonlight Holdings has a deep layout here. In the final analysis, Heterogeneous Integration is also the evolution of system-level packaging.
The semiconductor industry is facing a new era. In the past few decades, the scale reduction and cost reduction of devices will not continue. At each node, it becomes more and more difficult and expensive to integrate more transistors on a single IC. Semiconductor companies are now looking for technical solutions to bridge the gap and improve cost performance, while adding more functions through integration. Integrating all functions into a single chip (SoC) presents many challenges, including higher cost and design complexity. An attractive alternative is heterogeneous integration, which uses advanced packaging technology to integrate devices that can be designed and manufactured in an optimal way through the most appropriate process technology.
The general idea behind heterogeneous integration is to integrate multiple chips in the same package. As indicated in the overview of Chapter 1 of the Roadmap for Heterogeneous Integration 2019, Heterogeneous Integration refers to the integration of separately manufactured components into a higher level assembly (System-in-Package, SiP) that, In the aggregate, provides enhanced functionality and improved operating characteristics. Heterogeneous integration refers to the integration of separately manufactured devices into higher-level devices (such as SiP), which can provide enhanced functions and improved operating characteristics as a whole.
Sunmoon has many years of industry-leading packaging experience and system-level packaging technology. In response to the needs of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and miniaturization of mobile devices, Sunmoon system-level packaging technology can provide the integration of controllers and sensors with small volume, large capacity and low power consumption. In addition, it has also developed a diversified business model and actively promoted the system-level packaging ecosystem. Sunmoon provides innovative technology solutions for system-level packaging and sensor (MEMS) packaging, combining copper wire bonding, Flip-Chip, wafer-level packaging (WLP), fan-out wafer-level packaging (Fan Out), 2.5D/3D IC, substrate and embedded chip packaging to provide mobile terminals and Internet of Things.