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Semiconductor Market Commentary, Thru Project Mascot
High-grade PCB and low-loss glass-fiber makers Nitto Boseki, Elite Material and Taiwan Union Technology should keep rising as the obvious workaround to an inevitable memory despec for Nvidia's Rubin Ultra and Feynman. All three have more than tripled in the past year, and some are up over 10x in three years. Switching suppliers is harder here than in memory, which is why a few firms dominate, but it is higher risk and new supply coming online has not been analyzed. x.comÂ
IC substrates are Schmid's more relevant growth driver today because demand is already high and rising. Schmid customers Ibiden and Unimicron are expanding capacity with NVIDIA support; higher order intake supports the prospect of more equipment orders. Its balance sheet has improved, and the risk/reward looks attractive at current levels despite volatility. Glass substrates may take another one to two years to matter commercially. This is a personal assessment, not a buy recommendation. x.com … Show more
AI server PCB and substrate makers are among the safest, lower-risk, lower-reward ways to play Nvidia's racks. PCB value rose 233% in one NVL72 generation, second only to memory, and Morgan Stanley flagged PCB as the top downstream hardware gainer. Unimicron leads AI server PCB with 18-22% share; Zhen Ding gets nearly 70% of revenue from AI; Victory Giant is the most direct Nvidia PCB play; Elite Material's low-loss CCL passed Nvidia certification. TTM, Tripod, Compeq, WUS and Shennan also gain. … Show more
Nittobo's stock is stuck sideways because it will not raise prices despite a severe T-glass shortage. Per Japanese media reports, management plans no further price increases on low-thermal-expansion glass fabric and will instead accelerate capacity in Fukushima and Taiwan to defend market share. Unlike memory makers aggressively raising prices, Nittobo is too conservative and cares too much about customers, which is a reason not to own it. x.com x.comÂ
Higher HBM stack requirements favor Samsung Electronics shares, even as the broader semiconductor industry suffers and DRAM is in dire straits. Daishin Securities says plans for 4-high and 6-high HBM in low-end inference appear shelved, while Nvidia's 8-high Rubin option appears dropped amid base-die supply constraints and customers' preference for bandwidth. x.comÂ
Ajinomoto, Nittobo, Ibiden and AT&S sit in an ABF substrate supply chain consolidated into near-monopolies, where the AI chip bottleneck keeps moving. Nvidia, Intel and AMD are prepaying for suppliers' factories, with Ibiden receiving over 90 billion yen; companies that size do not prepay unless out of options. Ajinomoto holds over 95% of the substrate film market, and Apple, Nvidia and Google are chasing Nittobo's glass fabric. A capex cycle ending in overcapacity is the risk. x.com x.comÂ
AMD and Nvidia face a growing capital burden from substrates without the benefit of foundry margin stacking. Each is committing $1 billion to the substrate ecosystem; AMD has also publicly committed $10 billion to its Taiwan supply chain, more than three times its Q2 net income. That capital is unavailable for R&D and product development, while their gross margins are flat or shrinking. Intel's gross margin is growing as customers prepay its foundry for substrates. x.comÂ
Copper connectivity stays in Nvidia's racks longer than anyone modeled, a win for Amphenol and Credo. Per @SemiAnalysis_, the Kyber NVL144 rack is delayed more than 12 months to 2028 because its PCB midplane cannot be made at scale, and the NVL72x2 backup was cancelled. Co-packaged optics will not arrive until the Feynman generation, so the shift away from copper in scale-up moves out with it. x.comÂ
Nvidia's co-investment supports Samsung Electro-Mechanics' substrate expansion because it expects capacity to be tight when it needs supply. Samsung Electro-Mechanics says dedicated compute and switch substrate supply to Nvidia starts this year, with double-digit annual volume growth; by 2028 Nvidia orders should take a substantial share of its package-substrate capacity. Global customers fund part of its 6.78 trillion won expansion, but new Sejong output starts in September 2028. x.comÂ
The move from organic ABF substrates to glass is becoming a necessity for Nvidia's largest packages, and Nittobo, Schmid, LPKF and Ibiden sit at its choke points. Nittobo has a near-monopoly on low-CTE T-Glass fiber amid a shortage; LPKF's LIDE drilling and Schmid's inline systems ride US and EU sovereign AI pushes; Ibiden bridges ABF and glass core. Timing is the risk: TSMC pushed panel-level CoPoS to Q4 2030, so Rubin Ultra may use hybrid glass stiffeners, and Nittobo has already run 9x. x.com … Show more
As custom AI chips become normal, the scarce asset may be the capacity to build them, since every design passes through the same packaging, substrate, PCB material and manufacturing bottlenecks. Meta with MediaTek and Amazon with Alchip show chip design going modular. That favors TSMC for manufacturing, Alchip for ASIC back-end work, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Ibiden and AT&S for high-end substrates, and Shengyi Technology if AI PCB material stays tight. The bottleneck map widened. x.com x.comÂ
