Nvidia secured more than 60% of TSMC's total CoWoS capacity for 2025 and 2026, with every Blackwell GPU and the upcoming Rubin architecture requiring CoWoS-L. At the back-end of 2025, it was reported that TSMC’s CoWoS capacity was stretched due to AI demand , and that Intel was picking up packaging interest from firms either blocked from accessing CoWoS or looking for a shorter path to production.
TrendForce then reported in early December that both CoWoS-L and CoWoS-S were fully booked, and that Google had cut its 2026 TPU target by 1 million units due to allocation limits. TSMC CEO C.C. Wei, of course, said during the Q3 2025 earnings call that AI-related capacity, both front-end and back-end, remained very tight, falling “about three times short” of AI demand .
Only a handful of customers have been publicly named as being interested in EMIB-T, and there’s been no official confirmation by Intel to date. MediaTek was named by the Commercial Times back in November as actively recruiting engineers with EMIB experience, with the publication adding that Intel was “tapping Intel’s advanced EMIB-T packaging” to secure more capacity. Amazon is reportedly another named customer , claiming Intel is in active discussions with AWS for Trainium-class custom AI processor packaging.
Meanwhile, standard EMIB has the customer pipeline that EMIB-T doesn’t. Nvidia's $5 billion September 2025 investment in Intel includes confirmed use of EMIB and Foveros, with Jensen Huang and Lip-Bu Tan naming both technologies on the joint announcement call, and DigiTimes has reported that approximately 25% of Feynman GPU packaging will run through Intel. Microsoft's Maia AI accelerator is Intel Foundry's marquee 18A customer under a $15 billion lifetime contract originally announced at Intel Foundry Direct Connect 2024, while Google is understood to be designing EMIB into its 2027 TPU v9.
Intel’s Foundry VP of Packaging, Mark Gardner, told EE Times way back in March last year that Intel is "in production today and have been in production even last year in cases where we took things that were designed for CoWoS and are now designed for manufacture with either EMIB or Foveros," confirming that live design migration off TSMC is already occurring on the standard EMIB platform.
Clearwater Forest , the 288-core Xeon 6+ E-core server processor formally launched in H1 2026 after a delay from its original 2025 target, uses second-generation standard EMIB combined with Foveros Direct 3D hybrid bonding across a 17-tile package. The configuration spans 12 compute tiles on Intel 18A, three base tiles on Intel 3, and two I/O tiles on Intel 7, connected by 12 EMIB bridges. Diamond Rapids , the Xeon 7 P-core server processor with up to 192 cores, also targets H2 2026 using standard EMIB plus Foveros.
Intel's packaging footprint spans three continents. In Rio Rancho, New Mexico, Intel launched the Fab 9 facility in January 2024 as the first co-located high-volume advanced packaging site, adjacent to the existing Fab 11X and backed by a $3.5 billion investment. Intel later received $500 million in CHIPS Act funding earmarked for further modernization of Fab 9, Fab 11, and Fab 11X.
In Asia, the Penang, Malaysia, advanced packaging complex is 99% complete, with first-phase operations beginning sometime this year. Intel has also outsourced EMIB production to Amkor’s Songdo K5 facility in South Korea — described as a “first-ever” outsourcing move by TrendForce — with additional Amkor sites planned in Portugal and Arizona.
However, EMIB-T itself hasn’t yet shipped in any commercial product. Standard EMIB has been in volume since 2017 and is what every named Intel packaging customer is currently using, but the TSV-enhanced variant is only now due to roll out, with external customer designs expected in production "in the next year or two," says Mark Gardner.
Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist.\u00a0 Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.\u00a0 ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-20/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Luke James Social Links Navigation Contributor Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/intels-emib-t-heads-for-fab-rollout-this-year#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.