Amid challenges in the foundry sector, Samsung’s chip packaging expert, Lin Juncheng, has stepped down. A former TSMC veteran with nearly two decades of experience, Lin left Samsung after his contract expired at the end of 2024. Rumors suggest he may be joining a Chinese or a Taiwanese company.
Samsung loses its chip packaging expert amid foundry challenges
Lin Juncheng is a chip packaging expert who worked at the Taiwanese foundry giant TSMC from 1999 to 2017. He then moved to American chipmaker Micron and then to Taiwanese semiconductor equipment manufacturer Skytech before eventually joining TSMC’s arch-rival Samsung.
At Samsung, Lin served as the vice president of the company’s System Package Lab under the Semiconductor Research Institute. He led the development of next-gen high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, including HBM4 packaging technology.
Towards the end of 2024, rumors started circulating that Lin might head back to Taiwan in 2025 or join a Chinese firm. While it’s still unclear where he is headed, the packaging expert has confirmed his departure from Samsung. According to the Korean publication FNnews, Lin announced his resignation via a social media post (h/t @Jukanlosreve).
“I’m excited to contribute to the development of my company and my personal career by applying Samsung’s cutting-edge packaging technologies, such as 3D Integrated Circuits (3DIC), HBM 16-speed hybrid copper bonding, I-CubeE, I-CubeR, and co-packaged optics (CPO),” Lin posted (translated from Korean).
While he seems to have left Samsung on good terms, some structural changes within the company could have contributed to his decision. The company recently reorganized its Advanced Packaging (AVP) business team into the AVP Development Team under the leadership of Vice Chairman Dr. Jeon Young-hyu.
Lin’s departure couldn’t have come at a worse time for Samsung. The company has big plans for packaging technology. As the demand for advanced HBM chips grows in the AI era, packaging solutions are proving critical. Samsung is building a new packaging plant in the US and plans a complete overhaul of the packaging supply chain to strengthen its technological competitiveness in this market.
