With the supply of display driver ICs (DDI) falling increasingly short of demand, cantilever probe cards needed to process DDI and other midrange logic ICs including NAND controllers are also in increasingly tight supply, prompting chipmakers to look for more probe card suppliers or offer higher quotes to secure more capacity support from their existing partners, according to industry sources.

As a leading vendor of cantilever probe cards for DDI chips, MPI has seen its capacity fully booked by chipmakers for months, having extended delivery lead time to 3-4 months from 3-4 weeks, the sources said, adding that some chipmakers are raising quotes for their orders by 20-50% seeking quicker delivery.

DDI chip vendors including Novatek Microelectronics, Fitipower Integrated Technology, FocalTech Systems and Himax Technologies are all gearing up to seek more supply sources of cantilever probe cards as well as striving for more capacity support from foundry and backend houses, so as to fulfill abundant orders for handset TDDI chips and OLED DDI chips and for other types of logic chips for consumer applications.

Besides MPI, second-tier supplier ProbeLeader and Hermes Testing Solutions have seen constant influx of orders for cantilever probe cards from the chips vendors.

MPI has reported its 2020 revenues expanded 7.4% on year to NT$5.926 billion, with its December revenues shooting up 30% sequentially to NT$579 million on strong shipments.