SEMICONDUCTOR SUPPLY CHAIN · ASSEMBLY, PACKAGING & TEST
Back-end Manufacturing
How fabricated wafers become tested, protected and electrically connected products ready for electronic systems.
Back-end manufacturing begins after circuits have been fabricated on a wafer. It identifies good dies, separates them, creates electrical and thermal connections, packages them and verifies that finished devices meet performance and reliability requirements.
Wafer sort and known-good dies
Electrical probes contact test structures and individual dies while they are still on the wafer. Wafer sort identifies devices that meet initial specifications and maps their locations. Accurate testing becomes especially important when several expensive dies will later be combined in one advanced package.
Dicing, thinning and die preparation
Wafers may be ground and polished to reduce thickness before being cut into individual dies. Blades, lasers and other precision processes must control cracks, particles and mechanical stress. Thin dies are important for stacked memory and compact packages but are more difficult to handle.
Assembly and electrical connection
A die is attached to a substrate, leadframe, interposer or another die. Wire bonding, flip-chip bumps, copper pillars and hybrid bonding provide different connection densities. Encapsulation and molding protect the assembly, while the substrate connects it to a printed circuit board.
Packaging is now part of system architecture
Advanced packages place logic, memory and specialized chiplets close together. Interposers, bridges, fan-out structures and 3D stacking shorten data paths. The package must distribute power, preserve signal integrity and remove heat, making back-end decisions central to AI and high-performance computing.
Japan’s role in the back end
Japanese companies supply dicing and grinding tools, molding equipment, package substrates, bonding materials, compounds and test systems. DISCO, TOWA and Advantest occupy different but connected positions. Japan can gain further importance as HBM, chiplets and power modules increase packaging complexity.
Primary sources
Last reviewed: August 2026.
Contact SemiStructure about Japan →