Accelerating Automotive SoC Design with Chiplets

By Kalar Rajendiran

January 4, 2025

The automotive industry is evolving rapidly with the increasing demand for intelligent, connected, and autonomous vehicles. Central to this transformation are System-on-Chip (SoC) designs, which integrate multiple processing units into a single chip for managing everything from safety systems to in-car entertainment. However, as these systems become more complex, traditional SoC designs face challenges around performance, power, and scalability. Chiplet-based architectures are now driving innovation by offering more flexible, efficient, and customizable solutions for automotive SoCs.

Cadence recently hosted a webinar on this topic, with Moshiko Emmer, a Distinguished Engineer for the company’s Silicon Solutions Group (SSG) presenting.

Benefits of Leveraging Chiplets in Automotive SoC Design

Chiplet-based designs are reshaping automotive SoC development by offering a modular and scalable approach. Each chiplet, such as CPU cores, memory units, or specialized processing units like NPUs, is a self-contained module that can be easily integrated into larger systems. As automotive systems advance, especially with ADAS, infotainment, and autonomous driving, chiplet architectures provide several key advantages.

• Enable engineers to focus on specific value-added functions, reducing development time, cost, and risk while improving time-to-market.
• Allow for highly scalable designs, meeting the varying performance and power needs of different vehicle segments.
• Ensure long-term cost efficiency and adaptability to new technologies through reuse of chiplets across multiple generations of SoCs

By combining off-the-shelf chiplets with specialized automotive IP, manufacturers can build comprehensive solutions, benefiting from a broad ecosystem of reference designs and industry-standard IP.

To read the full article, click here