While Apple has started to release more orders to AMD for high-end GPUs needed for new iMac series, Taiwan-based outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) companies have stepped up 2.5D packaging for the GPUs, according to supply chain sources.

The new iMac series adopt GPUs supplied by AMD, with the super workstation-class 27-inch iMac Pro equipped with Radeon Pro Vega 56 GPU and 8GB HBM2 memory or Radeon Pro Vega 64 and 16GB HBM2 memory. The high-end GPUs are packaged using 2.5D technology while the general-spec GPUs use flip-chip packaging process. Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) handle the packaging for the iMac GPUs, with testing support from King Yuan Electronics, the sources said.

These Taiwan OSAT firms will be busy carrying out 2.5D and flip-chip packaging operations through the end of 2017 in line with the rollout of Apple's new iMac series, the sources said.

At the moment, ASE and SPIL are major players in the 2.5D IC packaging market, able to compete against TSMC's CoWoS (chip on wafer on substrate) 2.5D packaging technology, industry sources said.

Patently Apple posted a report back in July titled "TSMC Entering CoWoS Technology Market Powering AI and Autonomous Vehicles for Nvidia, Google and Likely Apple." TSMC's president and co-CEO Mark Liu noted in that report that deep learning has been the largest breakthrough in AI architecture over the past five decades.

Back in June the EETimes posted a report titled "AMD Beats Nvidia to 2.5-D Graphics." The report noted that "AMD beat archrival Nvidia to the goal of rolling out high-end graphics cards that use DRAM chip stacks to provide more memory bandwidth — and thus performance — on relatively small, low-power boards." This is one of the advantages that the new AMD GPUs will bring to the new iMac Pro later this year.

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