Via tomshardware.com
The world's largest chipmaker is ditching circular wafers for rectangular panels to meet insatiable AI demand, and the ripple effects will reach crypto mining and beyond.
TSMC is building a new type of chip packaging technology called CoPoS, short for Chip-on-Panel-on-Substrate, that swaps traditional circular wafers for larger rectangular panels. The move is designed to squeeze more usable area out of each production run and directly challenge Intel’s competing EMIB platform in the race to package ever-larger AI processors.
From circles to rectangles #
The core innovation is deceptively simple. Traditional semiconductor packaging uses circular 300mm wafers, which waste material around the edges because chips are square. TSMC’s CoPoS technology starts with rectangular panels measuring 310×310 mm, dramatically increasing the usable surface area per production unit.
TSMC’s current advanced packaging platform, called CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate), has been the gold standard for high-performance AI chips. Nvidia’s data center GPUs rely on it heavily. The problem is that CoWoS capacity is fully booked through 2027, creating a bottleneck that limits how quickly the AI industry can scale.
CoPoS is the relief valve. Pilot production reportedly commenced around June 2026 at VisEra’s Longtan plant in Taiwan, with mass production not expected until the second half of 2028 or possibly into 2029. TSMC is also exploring glass substrates for the technology, which could improve both performance and cost efficiency compared to conventional organic substrates.
The Intel rivalry heats up #
Intel’s EMIB (Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge) technology represents the most credible alternative to TSMC’s packaging dominance, and it’s already attracting design wins. MediaTek, for example, has been reported as a client exploring both TSMC’s CoWoS and Intel’s EMIB, hedging its bets across both platforms.
TSMC’s response with CoPoS is essentially a message to the market: we’re not standing still. By moving to panel-level packaging, TSMC aims to offer better economics on larger AI chip packages while maintaining the performance edge that has made CoWoS the default choice for hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.
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