Samsung Chips Packaging gets a new Vice President and TSMC needs to worry

A senior R&D executive with nearly two decades of experience at TSMC recently joined Samsung. Insiders in the semiconductor industry told Taiwan’s DigiTimes that the senior executive’s move was “rare” and could pose a “threat” to TSMC’s hegemony.

Lin Jun-Cheng began his long tenure at TSMC in 1999, following a stint at Micron Technology. The executive worked in TSMC’s advanced packaging and testing department and has been credited with driving the advancement of packaging technologies such as CoWoS and InFO.

Lin was the Deputy Director of R&D at TSMC before leaving in 2017. In the meantime, he worked as the CEO of Skytech, a Taiwanese semiconductor equipment company, gaining production experience for packaging equipment.

Lin’s new title at Samsung is Vice President of Advanced Packaging Business.

According to reports, Lin’s time at TSMC did not give him the opportunity to work directly with clients. Perhaps he gained a lot more of that kind of experience during his most recent tenure as CEO of Skytech. Nonetheless, his TSMC work in 3D IC packaging was well received by major foundry clients such as Nvidia, Apple, AMD, and various HPC specialist companies. Lin also assisted TSMC R&D in obtaining over 400 patents during his tenure there.

Lin’s most recent experiences at Skytech are worth investigating further. The company actually produces foundry tools for 2.5D and 3D packaging. Lin has assisted Skytech in obtaining over 100 patents.

Lin was hired after Samsung established an advanced packaging commercialization task force in 2022, according to Business Korea. Samsung recognised that this was an area where it could improve, and Lin is just the latest in a string of hires from Intel, Qualcomm, and Apple.

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