Chiplets Make Progress Using Interconnects As Glue


Breaking up SoCs into their component parts and putting those and other pieces together in some type of heterogeneous assembly is beginning to take shape, fueled by advances in interconnects, complex partitioning, and industry learnings about what works and what doesn't. While the vision of plug-and-play remains intact, getting there is a lot more complicated than initially imagined. It can ... » read more

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era


The widespread adoption of chiplets in domain-specific applications is creating a partitioning challenge that is much more complex than anything chip design teams have dealt with in previous designs. Nearly all the major systems companies, packaging houses, IDMs, and foundries have focused on chiplets as the best path forward to improve performance and reduce power. Signal paths can be short... » read more

Intel and Cadence Collaboration on UCIe: Demonstration of Simulation Interoperability


The Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) 1.0 specification was announced in early 2022. A new updated UCIe 1.1 specification was released on August 8, 2023. The standardized open chiplet standard allows for heterogeneous integration of die-to-die link interconnects within the same package. The UCIe standard allows for advanced package and standard package options to tradeoff cost, band... » read more

Design Considerations In Photonics


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about what CMOS and photonics engineers need to know to successfully collaborate, with James Pond, fellow at Ansys; Gilles Lamant, distinguished engineer at Cadence; and Mitch Heins, business development manager for photonic solutions at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. To view part one of this discussion,... » read more

Chiplet Hardware Security Module To Mitigate Security Vulnerabilities In SiP Systems (Univ. of Florida)


A new technical paper titled "Advancing Trustworthiness in System-in-Package: A Novel Root-of-Trust Hardware Security Module for Heterogeneous Integration" was published by researchers at University of Florida (Gainesville). Abstract: "The semiconductor industry has adopted heterogeneous integration (HI), incorporating modular intellectual property (IP) blocks (chiplets) into a unified syst... » read more

Predicting Warpage in Different Types of IC Stacks At Early Stage Of Package Design


A new technical paper titled "Warpage Study by Employing an Advanced Simulation Methodology for Assessing Chip Package Interaction Effects" was published by researchers at Siemens EDA, D2S, and Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, Leti. Abstract: "A physics-based multi-scale simulation methodology that analyses die stress variations generated by package fabrication is employed for warpage study. The ... » read more

UCIe Goes Back To The Drawing Board


The integration of multiple dies within a single package increasingly is viewed as the next evolution for extending Moore’s Law, but it also presents myriad challenges — particularly in achieving a universally accepted standard integrating plug-and-play chiplets from different vendors. “In some respects, people are already doing this,” says Debendra Das Sharma, Intel senior fellow an... » read more

What Is A Chiplet, And Why Should You Care?


Chiplets are a new way to build system-on-chips (SoCs) that can improve yields and reduce costs by more than 45%. It partitions the chip into discrete elements and connects them with a standardized interface, allowing designers to meet performance, efficiency, power, size, and cost challenges in the 5/6G, AI, and VR era. Unlike monolithic SoCs, chiplets enable an open ecosystem of modular co... » read more

Closing The Test And Metrology Gap In 3D-IC Packages


The industry is investing in more precise and productive inspection and testing to enable advanced packages and eventually, 3D ICs. The next generations of aerospace, automotive, smartphone, and wearable tech most likely will be powered by multiple layers of intricately connected silicon, a stark departure from the planar landscapes of traditional integrated circuits. These 3D-ICs, compos... » read more

All-Digital MDL-Based Fast Lock Clock Generator For Low-Power Chiplet-Based SoC Design


A new technical paper titled "A Fast-Lock All-Digital Clock Generator for Energy Efficient Chiplet-Based Systems" was published by researchers at Hongik University, Seoul, South Korea. "An all-digital clock frequency multiplier that achieves excellent locking time for an energy-efficient chiplet-based system-on-chip (SoC) design is presented. The proposed architecture is based on an all-digi... » read more

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