The Semiconductor manufacturing industry is today facing more than ever the challenge to explore the so-called “More-than-Moore” 3-D integration route in order to pursue the continued aggressive scaling of the historical Moore’s Law. The whole Semiconductor industry supply chain is being concerned: from IDMs to Fabless and CMOS foundries, from OSATs to Substrate and Circuit Assembly players as well. We believe 3D integration with TSVs could accelerate even more current consolidation happening in CMOS wafer fabs and the shift toward a fabless foundry model. As the whole industry supply chain is being concerned, all players are at the moment positioning on the technology and evaluating about which 3-D technology platforms need to be invested and developed for their own business.

Times are bright for packagers from all across the world. A whole new infrastructure needs to be developed in the "Mid-end" of the semiconductor industry supply chain. New Technologies, Equipments and Advanced Materials coming both from the Front-end and the Back-end worlds are being developed and will give rise to a new revival of the semiconductor packaging and circuit assembly industries. Our latest market forecasts show that 3D-TSV wafers will be shipped in millions and have the potential to impact as much as 25% of the memory business by 2015. If we exclude memories, our analysis show that 3D-TSV wafers could account for more than 6% of the total semiconductor industry by 2015.

This new study aims at giving a better understanding about the right timeline for the successful adoption of the Through Silicon Via (3-D TSV interconnect) technology across the wide range of its driving end-applications. The two reports further quantify the potential impact of 3-D technologies on the semiconductor manufacturing market (at the Device / Equipment / Material levels) and evaluate how the industry supply chain is likely to evolve in the 2009-2015 time frames.