News briefing UMC announced that it has established a wafer-to-wafer (W2W) 3D IC project with partners Winbond, Faraday Technology, ASE and Cadence, and others to help customers speed up 3D packaging product production. Silicon stacking technology is used in production to integrate memories and processors to provide a one-stop stacking packaging platform. This platform can also respond to the increasing demands for efficient computing at component level with respect to AI trends extending from cloud computing to edge computing. Impact analysis The CEO of Intel recently stated that "AI will be everywhere", and predicted that "almost all technology products will revolve around AI by 2030", which should again highlight that AI is considered a key trend in the global semiconductor industry today and in the future. Although AI developments have brought about strong computing demands and promoted the growth of the chip market, the rate of expansion of this demand has far exceeded the scope of Moore's Law. To break loose from the limitations of advanced manufacturing processes and increase transistor density as well as computing power, advanced packaging technology has now become an important technological trend in the post-Moore era. For now, advanced packaging includes Flip Chip (FC-CSP, FC-BGA, FC-SiP), Fan-Out WLP, Fan-In WLP, 2.5D/3D, and many other technologies, whereas major semiconductor manufacturing plants around the world are aggressively deploying in the field of advanced packaging. Such plants encompass two key wafer-players of Taiwan, Intel of the United States, Samsung of South Korea, and JCET Global, TF Microelectronics, Huatian Technology, and others of mainland China, and all are focused on developing horizontal and vertical integration chip technology for application in areas such as high-efficient computing, AI computing, and high-bandwidth memory. It is estimated that the overall market size for packaging in 2021 will be approximately US$84.4 billion; advanced packaging should account for approximately 44.4%. Given the drive from efficient computing and AI, it is predicted that market share of advanced packaging will exceed 50% by 2027, with 2.5D/3D heterogeneous packaging to become the fastest growing technology. For the time being, advanced packaging is still using ABF substrate as the main material, whereas the upgrade of packaging technology would trigger continuous expansion in terms of area size and number of layers for ABF substrate, further enhancing its application and usage. In the future, we are likely to see the burgeon of a new-generation packaging material, such as glass substrate, which can accommodate the growing demands of high performance, low power consumption, and excellent heat dissipation in the semiconductor market.