TSMC Chairman Mark Liu says the AI chip shortage will last another year and a half, although the availability of the chips themselves is not the issue.

Companies are struggling to get access to the number of chips they need to power AI models and applications, but Liu says the issue is not with the chips themselves, but with the advanced COWOS packaging required to pair AI chips in various configurations to maximize their capabilities.

“It’s not the shortage of AI chips. It’s the shortage of our COWOS capacity,” Liu said at the SEMICON Taiwan industry fair, according to Nikkei Asia. Liu says COWOS demand tripled in the span of a year.

“Currently, we can’t fulfill 100% of our customers’ needs, but we try to support about 80%. We think this is a temporary phenomenon. After our expansion of [advanced chip packaging capacity], it should be alleviated in one and a half years.”

Liu says the industry will need to adopt a new paradigm for AI chips packaging.

“We are now putting together many chips into a tightly integrated massive interconnect system. This is a paradigm shift in semiconductor technology integration,” Liu said.