Lego-Style Software For Automotive And Industrial Chiplet Systems?


Chiplets are a key topic in the semiconductor industry today, as they offer the potential to greatly increase the performance and flexibility of chips. The current focus is primarily on implementation, in particular on the architecture and the development of die-to-die interfaces that enable efficient communication between the individual chips. These technologies hold out the promise of meeting... » read more

Chiplet Tradeoffs And Limitations


The semiconductor industry is buzzing with the benefits of chiplets, including faster time to market, better performance, and lower power, but finding the correct balance between customization and standardization is proving to be more difficult than initially thought. For a commercial chiplet marketplace to really take off, it requires a much deeper understanding of how chiplets behave indiv... » read more

What Exactly Are Chiplets And Heterogeneous Integration?


The terms “chiplet” and “heterogeneous integration” fill news pages, conference papers, and marketing presentations, and for the most part engineers understand what they're reading. But speakers sometimes stumble during a presentation trying to figure out whether a particular die qualifies as a chiplet, and heterogeneous integration comes in different guises for different people. Both t... » read more

3D-IC For The Masses


The concepts of 3D-IC and chiplets have the whole industry excited. It potentially marks the next stage in the evolution of the IP industry, but so far, technical difficulties and cost have curtailed its usage to just a handful of companies. Even within those, they do not appear to be seeing benefits from heterogeneous integration or reuse. Attempts to make this happen are not new. "A decade... » read more

Chiplets Add New Power Issues


Delivering and managing power are becoming key challenges in the rollout of chiplets, adding significantly to design complexity and forcing chipmakers to weigh tradeoffs that can have a big impact on the performance, reliability, and the overall cost of semiconductors. Power is a concern for every chip and chiplet design, even if the specifics differ based on the application. Systems vendors... » read more

Signal Integrity Plays Increasingly Critical Role In Chiplet Design


Maintaining the quality and reliability of electrical signals as they travel through interconnects is proving to be much more challenging with chiplets and advanced packaging than in monolithic SoCs and PCBs. Signal integrity is a fundamental requirement for all chips and systems, but it becomes more difficult with chiplets due to reflections, loss, crosstalk, process variation, and various ... » read more

What Exactly Is Multi-Physics?


Multi-physics is the new buzzword in semiconductor design and analysis, but the fuzziness of the term is a reflection of just how many new and existing problems need to be addressed simultaneously in the design flow with advanced nodes and packaging. This disaggregation of planar SoCs and the inclusion of more processing elements, memories, interconnects, and passives inside a package has cr... » read more

Chip Architectures Becoming Much More Complex With Chiplets


The migration from monolithic SoCs to chiplet-based designs is creating a confusing array of options and tradeoffs for design teams working at the leading edge, and the number of choices is only going to increase as third-party chiplets begin pouring into the market. That hasn't dampened the appetite for chiplets, however, which are deemed essential for future generations of semiconductors f... » read more

Advanced Packaging: A Curse Or A Blessing For Trustworthiness?


In recent years, the issue of trustworthiness in electronics has become increasingly important, especially in areas where security is of the essence such as the automotive sector, industry, and critical infrastructure. These sectors depend on electronic systems that are not only powerful but also absolutely reliable and, above all, secure. This represents a major challenge, as the increasing co... » read more

Strain, Stress In Advanced Packages Drives New Design Approaches


Thermal and mechanical stresses are creating significant challenges in heterogeneous chiplet assemblies, increasing the time and cost required to work through all the possible physical effects, dependencies, and interactions, and driving demand for new tools. Unlike in the past, when various components were crammed into a planar SoC on a relatively thick substrate, the new substrates are bei... » read more

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