An AI rack is a sandwich of five PCBs stacked together. Each one has its own supplier fight. The map is moving fast enough that two consecutive Rubin generations could ship with completely different vendor lists.
↓the five boards
the rack, opened up · five boards, top to bottom
· GB200 / GB300
M9 consensus
copper cables
78–104 layers
clean-room plants
→why the mid plane exists
Blackwell racks connect compute boards to switch boards through 5,000+ copper cables. Assembling the bundle is the named reason GB200 deliveries slipped.
The 576-rack architecture drops the cables for an orthogonal backplane — every drawer plugs into the same rigid PCB skeleton. The mid plane is the drawer-level version of the same shift.
⚡three barriers
SLP at 10 µm. Needs new clean-room plants. Avary has Apple SLP DNA; Victory Giant is committing capex.
a retrofit. capex bet.
M9 + Q-cloth. Retires mechanical drilling. Han’s Laser opens to >60% domestic share.
laser takes over.
Copper sintering for mid plane + backplane is industry-first, execution-speed-led.
at yield wins.
⌖the google sidebar
Forecast revised 2.5–3M → 4M TPU chips at ~$9k each. Uses 22–24 layer multi-high, not HDI. ISU / Wus / ChaoYing incumbent. Victory Giant queuing for ~6 month certification.