Samsung Electro-Mechanics has been supplying flip-chip ball grid array (FC-BGA) to Apple for use on their M1 chip since last year, TheElec has learned.
Japan’s Ibiden and Taiwan’s Unimicron are also supplying the chip boards for M1, people familiar with the matter said.
Ibiden, the world’s largest manufacturer of FC-BGA, was the largest supplier to Apple, they said.
Cupertino unveiled M1, its own PC processor, in November last year. The Arm-based SoC has been used in MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, iMac and iPad Pro since it was introduced.
Apple had said it plans to use M series of chips on all its Mac series by 2022.
Before the launch of M1, the company had used Intel’s chips for its PC lineup.
Apple already uses its own Arm-based SoC the A series for its iPhones, iPads and Apple Watch.
As the iPhone maker is planning to expand applying M series of chips to its products, Samsung Electro-Mechanics can expected to continue supplying FC-BGA and used in the chips.
The South Korean component maker had mostly supplied FC-BGA for Intel so far.
Meanwhile, Samsung Electro-Mechanics recently decided to spend 1.1 trillion won on its chip board business.
The amount is double that of its annual revenue of around 500 billion won it makes from its FC-BGA business.
While it is currently mostly manufacturing FC-BGA for PCs, it will likely aim to supply FC-BGA for servers as well, which is more lucrative.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics will likely build the new FC-BGA line in Vietnam where it use to operate a rigid flexible printed circuit board line.
FC-BGA is in high demand from servers and networks due to the pandemic.
