India, Dec. 12 -- The convergence of artificial intelligence, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and chiplet architectures has made packaging the new fulcrum of semiconductor performance. TSMC has emerged as the indispensable manufacturing cornerstone of this transition, while KLA Corp.-the industry's metrology and inspection leader-has become its arbiter of quality. Together, they represent the two interlocking sides of an industry undergoing structural realignment: one builds the packages, the other assures their integrity.

For TSMC, NVIDIA's next-generation GPU roadmap has created sustained pressure on its advanced-packaging capacity. CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) output is running near full utilization, while the transition to CoPoS (...