According to Nikkei Asia, as PC manufacturers like HP and Dell plan their 2027 supply demands, the once-unremarkable printed circuit board (PCB) is becoming a critical bottleneck. Many industry insiders say that the demand for AI computing power is consuming a large amount of production capacity, leading to a severe shortage of PCBs and chip substrates in the consumer electronics sector. Currently, Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD have identified PCBs and chip substrates as strategic resources. Nvidia announced collaborations with several major chip substrate manufacturers, including Ibiden, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, and Unimicron Technology, aiming to increase production capacity by 2.5 times within three years; AMD CEO Lisa Su has visited suppliers multiple times this year to secure production capacity.
However, the shortage is triggering a "butterfly effect": manufacturers are shifting production capacity to high-end AI products, resulting in a huge supply gap for traditional products such as PCs and mobile phones. Copper clad laminate (CCL) is a core material for PCB manufacturing, and its cost has surged at least 12 times since July. Unimicron Technology Chairman Chien Chih-cheng revealed that the delivery time for some equipment has been extended to 30 months. Zhen Ding Technology Chairman Shen Ching-fang stated that upstream material constraints are unlikely to ease in the short term. A sales representative from Jingwang Electronics stated frankly, "If a new customer places an order today, the earliest delivery time is the end of 2028." In addition, the AI boom has also driven up industry salaries, with the average salary in the PCB industry increasing by 20% to 30%, and the salaries of professionals with AI server experience may even double.
