Chapter 5, the concentration half

The test. A provisional reading. It stands if no line outside Taiwan is bonding the chapter’s accelerators, CoWoS-class packages (chip on wafer on substrate) with memory beside the chip, in volume production qualified by their buyers. A weakening in 2027 would have to come by another route than the reported lines, Intel’s packaging taking some of the work TSMC’s chairman said he hoped it would share, so the live test is the last reading.

a mixed or partial reading Every accelerator that matters outside China and carries its memory beside the chip passes through one island’s lines. The earliest lines reported off the island are Amkor’s in Arizona, targeted for early 2028, and TSMC’s own there, by 2029. On 21 October 2026 NVIDIA and Amkor said they planned to expand advanced packaging in South Korea, targeting more than a threefold increase in interposer wafer capacity by the end of 2028, naming no plant, product or volume. The half stands.

From The AI Compute Race. Read the book

Falls due

31 December 2027

Read on

The packagers’ own statements

Chapter

Chapter 5 — The Island in Every Machine

Why every accelerator runs through Taiwan: the foundry, the packaging and the memory that are booked years ahead, and what that does to anyone arriving late with cash.

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@misc{dryburgh-chapter-5-the-concentration-half-2026,
  author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
  title = {{Chapter 5, the concentration half}},
  howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests/2027-12},
  note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}