UMI: Extending Chiplet Interconnect Standards To Deal With The Memory Wall


With the Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit upon us, it’s an appropriate time to talk about chiplet interconnect (in fact the 2024 OCP Summit has a whole day dedicated to the multi-die topic, on October 17). Of particular interest is the Bunch of Wires (BoW) interconnect specification that continues to evolve. At OCP there will be an update and working group looking at version 2.1 of BoW. (... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Imec announced a new automotive chiplet consortium to evaluate which different architectures and packaging technologies are best for automotive applications. Initial members includes Arm, ASE, Cadence, Siemens, Synopsys, Bosch, BMW, Tenstorrent, Valeo, and SiliconAuto. Imec also launched star, a global network bringing together automotive and semiconductor innovators to address technological c... » 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

Using AI To Glue Disparate IC Ecosystem Data


AI holds the potential to change how companies interact throughout the global semiconductor ecosystem, gluing together different data types and processes that can be shared between companies that in the past had little or no direct connections. Chipmakers always have used abstraction layers to see the bigger picture of how the various components of a chip go together, allowing them to pinpoi... » read more

UMI Can Scale the Memory Wall


While the improvements in processor performance to enable the incredible compute requirements of applications like Chat-GPT get all the headlines, a not-so-new phenomenon known as the memory wall risks negating those advancements. Indeed, it has been clearly demonstrated that as CPU/GPU performance increases, wait time for memory also increases, preventing full utilization of the processors. ... » read more

UMI Can Scale the Memory Wall


While the improvements in processor performance to enable the incredible compute requirements of applications like Chat-GPT get all the headlines, a not-so-new phenomenon known as the memory wall risks negating those advancements. Indeed, it has been clearly demonstrated that as CPU/GPU performance increases, wait time for memory also increases, preventing full utilization of the processors. ... » read more

Simultaneous Bi-Directional Signaling: A Breakthrough Alternative For Multi-Die Assemblies


In designing multi-die systems-in-package, with or without chiplets, it is easy to think of the interconnect between dies as simply analogous to the interconnect between functional blocks on a single die. But this analogy can lead architects and designers into a blind alley from which it becomes impossible to meet system performance and power requirements. The reason lies in fundamental differe... » read more

Chiplets and the Early Adopter’s Dilemma


Early adopters of a new technology often face a serious dilemma. On one hand, moving early means exploiting the most aggressive new technology available. But on the other hand, making early technology decisions can lock a product line into a path that will later become uncompetitive—either a single-vendor solution that can’t guarantee continuity of supply, or a roadmap that can’t shift an... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


The U.S. Department of Commerce and Texas Instruments (TI) signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms to provide up to $1.6 billion in CHIPS Act funding towards TI’s investment of over $18 billion for three 300mm semiconductor wafer fabs under construction in Texas and Utah. TI also expects to get about $6 billion to $8 billion from the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Investmen... » read more

What’s Missing In 2.5D EDA Tools


Gaps in EDA tool chains for 2.5D designs are limiting the adoption of this advanced packaging approach, which so far has been largely confined to high-performance computing. But as the rest of the chip industry begins migrating toward advanced packaging and chiplets, the EDA industry is starting to change direction. There are learning periods with all new technologies, and 2.5D advanced pack... » read more

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