Foundries and OSATs increasingly overlap on advanced packaging

Chipmakers and outsourced assembly and test (OSAT) providers are increasingly taking on each other's work. The main overlap areas are 2.5D integration and panel assembly, with hybrid bonding likely to follow. Foundry capacity constraints and lithography-heavy advanced packaging are driving the shift.

• OSATs are taking on 2.5D packaging and panel assembly once handled by foundries
• Hybrid bonding remains a foundry activity but may move to OSATs
• Advanced packaging now needs wafer-fab-style lithography for fine-pitch RDLs
• Capacity shortages push foundries to offload legacy-node backend work