Nearly 100 semiconductor and hardware companies gathered at Jefferies’ annual Semiconductor Conference on Thursday, where supply constraints emerged as a central theme across compute, analog, and optical segments.
Coherent Corp. (NYSE:COHR) reported “extraordinary” demand for its products, forecasting that supply will fall short of demand for at least 12 to 18 months. The company indicated it may need to expand capacity beyond current plans to quadruple production. Coherent also highlighted that the optical-content opportunity in near-package optics is comparable to co-packaged optics, underscoring the segment’s growth potential.
Transceiver and optics projections point to accelerating demand. Shipments of 1.6T transceivers are expected to reach 100 million units by 2027, while 800G products remain in strong demand. Adoption of co-packaged optics, however, has been pushed to the second half of 2028 at the earliest, with possible delays into 2029 or 2030 due to testing, reliability, supply-chain, and standardization hurdles.
Compute companies are actively securing critical inputs. Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) has moved to lock in substrates, DRAM, and other essential materials, evaluating alternatives such as 8-Hi HBM4E, 12-Hi HBM4, and 8-Hi HBM4 to address constrained die supply and support accelerator shipments. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) secured substrate capacity during the pandemic and anticipates year-over-year growth in units and average selling prices tied to the Venice processor on N2 process technology. Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) faces substrate constraints but noted that Clearwater Forest demand is exceeding expectations, while Granite Rapids is supporting better ASPs despite having fewer cores than competitors.
The analog segment continues to recover, driven by data center demand, while the automotive segment shows modest improvement—particularly in China and electric vehicle applications—though Tier 1 inventories remain low with limited restocking signals. In the test segment, wafer-level burn-in adoption is rising, with Aehr Test Systems (NASDAQ:AEHR) expanding its backlog and Cohu Inc. (NASDAQ:COHU) tracking its funnel by program rather than account.
