ULVAC enters the advanced-packaging equipment race, aiming at panel-level packaging for AI semiconductors by 2028.

ULVAC enters the advanced-packaging equipment race, aiming at panel-level packaging for AI semiconductors by 2028.

ULVAC (Alback), the Kanagawa-based vacuum equipment maker founded in 1952, has begun developing manufacturing equipment for next-generation large rectangular substrates used in advanced semiconductor packaging, according to an interview president Junya Kiyota gave to Nikkei. The company, which built its business on sputtering, ashing, etching, and ion implantation tools sold to display, semiconductor, and power-device customers, sees AI demand as opening a new growth axis beyond its front-end strengths in logic metal hardmasks, memory metal films, and mature nodes. In the back-end, ULVAC already holds a position in descum ashing for interposers, and its experience handling 400–3000mm glass substrates for flat-panel displays gives it a claimed edge over 300mm wafer-tool competitors in panel-level packaging (PLP), where square panels require different handling and deposition-uniformity know-how. Kiyota said the company aims to have equipment ready for the 2028 timeframe, when pilot lines for large-substrate chip assembly are expected to move into mass production, though he did not name customers or order volumes.

The move reflects a structural bottleneck in AI chips: as the economics of shrinking linewidths weaken, performance increasingly depends on packing multiple dies — GPUs and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) — closely together on larger substrates. Bigger panels are more prone to warping and defects, creating demand for new deposition, cleaning, and handling equipment at the back end. Nvidia has discussed optical interconnect for 2028 GPUs, Samsung has floated finer DRAM lithography, and the industry timeline for large-panel assembly lines crossing from pilot to volume production is narrowing toward 2028. ULVAC's entry deepens the supplier base for panel-level packaging tools, a niche currently served by a small set of equipment makers, and signals that Japanese vacuum-equipment vendors see AI packaging as a durable capex cycle rather than a passing demand spike.

For toolmakers, the key question is whether large-panel packaging becomes a standard step in high-end AI accelerator manufacturing or remains confined to specific die-stacking architectures. ULVAC's display heritage — handling large glass sheets with uniform deposition — is a differentiated starting point, but execution on defect control and substrate handling at panel scale will determine whether it converts into meaningful share. Builders and investors watching the AI hardware stack should track when 2028 pilot lines convert to volume orders and which foundries and OSATs commit to panel-level processes, since that will validate or undercut the capex thesis behind this equipment push.

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