TSMC's CoWoS Leaking? Foreign Analysts Reveal Yield Issues: 'Entire Chip Scrapped' — Intel's Golden Opportunity

Intel is striving to reclaim leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, with its advanced packaging technology EMIB becoming a market focal point. It's even rumored to rival TSMC's CoWoS, attracting heavyweight clients such as NVIDIA and Google. According to a recent report by foreign media outlet EE Times, TSMC is encountering difficulties in integrating AI accelerators with high-bandwidth memory (HBM) into a single chip package—creating a prime opportunity for Intel to win over customers.

The report cites Neil Shah, co-founder of research firm Counterpoint Research, who notes that TSMC's CoWoS advanced packaging has long served major AI clients but is now hitting bottlenecks. "HBM is highly dependent on CoWoS's silicon interposer architecture, but this brings high costs, including increased package thickness, yield risks, capacity constraints, and high scrap costs—opening the door for alternative solutions."

Shah believes Intel's EMIB advanced packaging, along with future ZAM and XBM technologies, could help AI chip designers avoid the pitfalls of CoWoS. "Large chips inherently have higher defect rates. If the interposer fails at the final packaging stage, the GPU die and more than eight connected HBM chips are all scrapped—losing thousands of dollars worth of silicon at the last manufacturing step."

Other analysts agree Intel is building competitive advantages. The CEO of International Business Strategies stated, "Intel's packaging already has several important external customers, and its growth potential over the next few years is substantial. Their packaging technology is excellent, and they're currently expanding capacity in New Mexico, USA."

Analysts suggest Intel's advanced packaging could break through TSMC's CoWoS bottlenecks. The image shows Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan delivering a keynote at COMPUTEX 2026. (Photo by Chen Pin-Yu)

The report also reveals that Counterpoint's supply chain investigation indicates Google and its partner MediaTek are set to adopt Intel's EMIB-T technology for their next-generation TPU.

However, Intel still faces significant hurdles in challenging TSMC. Shah notes, "For now, TSMC paired with HBM remains the safest and most flexible general-purpose platform, capable of meeting both AI training and inference demands."

Shah adds that while NVIDIA and AMD show no clear signs of diversifying suppliers, Google and MediaTek are actively seeking multiple sourcing options. "If Google truly shifts to Intel, the impact will be enormous—Google is already the world's second-largest AI accelerator company."

More exclusive insights from Feng Media:

- Not CoWoS! TSMC's next-gen advanced packaging 'CoPoS' is coming—Analyst: The first major customer is this - Watch out TSMC! Latest progress on Intel's EMIB: Yield approaching 90%, cost half of CoWoS - TSMC under pressure? Rise of advanced packaging—Intel leads 'these two Taiwanese giants' into Google's supply chain