“Why can’t Samsung Electronics get dual TC bonding equipment, the core HBM equipment of Korea-U.S. semiconductor?”

“Why can’t Samsung Electronics get dual TC bonding equipment, the core HBM equipment of Korea-U.S. semiconductor?”

Hynix and Micron receive and use dual TC bonder equipment from Korea-U.S. Semiconductor, but Samsung Electronics has not yet received it and uses third-party equipment with poor performance.

In 2017, Hanmi Semiconductor developed the world’s first dual TC bonder equipment, which has four times higher throughput than the existing TC bonder, and delivered it to Hynix.

The TC Bonder connects wafers with a thermocompression bonding device, enabling the formation of 2.5D and 3D semiconductors. This is a core equipment needed to produce HBMs that implement interactive artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT.

However, Samsung Electronics, the largest of the three semiconductor companies, is not receiving delivery of this core equipment.

Why is that?

Let’s go back in time and go back to 2012.

Korea-U.S. Semiconductor filed four patent infringement lawsuits against Samsung Electronics’ subsidiary, Secron, related to Soing and Placement, which is used for post-semiconductor processing, and won.

It was developed by Korea-U.S. Semiconductor and has been supplying dozens of “Sawing and Placement” to Samsung Electronics a year since 2000, but orders have plummeted since 2007 and only one was delivered between 2008 and 2012.

During this period, Secron, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, supplied 158 units of “Sawing and Placement” equipment.

The problem is that since Samsung Electronics is a subsidiary, Korea-U.S. semiconductors can overlook it, but Secron has eroded Korea-U.S. semiconductors’ clients in the global market.

When Samsung infringed on Hanmi Semiconductor’s patents and produced products through its subsidiaries and threatened Hanmi Semiconductor’s survival, Hanmi Semiconductor filed a patent lawsuit and eventually won.

It was an incident that clearly showed the technology exploitation of small and medium-sized enterprises, a long-standing chronic disease of large Korean companies.

After the incident, the Korea-U.S. semiconductor business was cut off, and the Korea-U.S. semiconductor recently dismissed the Korea-U.S. semiconductor as groundless and not in discussion, although Samsung has been contacting Korea-U.S. semiconductor in various ways to receive equipment and shed unknowns

Samsung Electronics, a superpower in the semiconductor market, has changed to the position of ‘B’ in the HBM market.

This is all thanks to Lee Jae-yong.