Choosing The Correct High-Bandwidth Memory


The number of options for how to build high-performance chips is growing, but the choices for attached memory have barely budged. To achieve maximum performance in automotive, consumer, and hyperscale computing, the choices come down to one or more flavors of DRAM, and the biggest tradeoff is cost versus speed. DRAM remains an essential component in any of these architectures, despite years ... » read more

The March Toward Chiplets


The days of monolithic chips developed at the most advanced process nodes are rapidly dwindling. Nearly everyone working at the leading edge of design is looking toward some type of advanced packaging using discrete heterogeneous components. The challenge now is how to shift the whole chip industry into this disaggregated model. It's going to take time, effort, as well as a substantial reali... » read more

Holistic Die-to-Die Interface Design Methodology For 2.5-D Multi-Chip-Module Systems


More than Moore technologies can be supported by system level diversification enabled by chiplet based integrated systems within multi-chip-modules (MCM) and silicon interposer based 2.5D systems. The division of large system-on-chip dies into smaller chiplets with different technology nodes specific to the chiplet application requirement enables the performance enhancement at system level whil... » read more

Is UCIe Really Universal?


Chiplets are rapidly becoming the means to overcome the slowing of Moore's Law, but whether one interface is capable of joining them all together isn't clear yet. The Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) believes it will work, but some in the industry remain unconvinced. At least part of the problem is that interconnect standards are never truly finished. Even today, the protocols tha... » read more

Mastering FOWLP And 2.5D Design Is Easier Than You Think


IC packaging has come into its own, where once traditional packaging was a “necessary evil,” today’s packaging can add significant value. There is an increase in functional density and flexibility by providing a platform for heterogeneous design assembly. Where designs implemented in an SoC can become too large to yield satisfactorily and too difficult to implement on one process node, pa... » read more

What’s So Different About Interposer Signal Integrity?


By Kelly Damalou and Pete Gasperini To achieve gains in power, performance, area, and cost, 3D-IC architectures are pushing electronics design to new limits. Silicon integration technology and associated devices have undergone an impressive evolution over the last several decades. Their development encourages technological advancement in applications like high-performance computing, Artificial... » read more

Testing 2.5D And 3D-ICs


Disaggregating SoCs allows chipmakers to cram more features and functions into a package than can fit on a reticle-sized chip. But as Vidya Neerkundar, technical marketing engineer at Siemens EDA explains, there are challenges in accessing all of the dies or chiplets in a package. The new IEEE 1838 standard addresses that, as well as what to do when 2.5D and 3D-ICs are combined together in the ... » read more

HBM3 In The Data Center


Frank Ferro, senior director of product management at Rambus, talks about the forthcoming HBM3 standard, why this is so essential for AI chips and where the bottlenecks are today, what kinds of challenges are involved in working with this memory, and what impact chiplets and near-memory compute will have on HBM and bandwidth.     » read more

IC Architectures Shift As OEMs Narrow Their Focus


Diminishing returns from process scaling, coupled with pervasive connectedness and an exponential increase in data, are driving broad changes in how chips are designed, what they're expected to do, and how quickly they're supposed to do it. In the past, tradeoffs between performance, power, and cost were defined mostly by large OEMs within the confines of an industry-wide scaling roadmap. Ch... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Highlights from ITC The hot topic at this week’s International Test Conference (ITC) was tackling silent data corruption, with panel discussions, papers, and Google’s Parthasarathy Ranganathan’s keynote address all emphasizing the urgency of the issue. In the past two years Meta, Google, and Microsoft have reported on silent errors, errors not detected at test, which are adversely impact... » read more

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