Cadence Collaborates with TSMC to Shape the Future of 3D-IC

By Cadence Design Systems

January 9, 2025

The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has positioned it as a driving force in today's semiconductor industry. With the insatiable demand for AI-driven computation and memory-heavy applications, traditional monolithic designs are struggling to keep up. To address this, innovative approaches like chiplets and three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D-IC) are reshaping the design landscape. Cadence and TSMC are at the forefront of this revolution, collaborating to deliver groundbreaking solutions for advanced-node silicon and 3D-IC technologies.

This blog explores how the Cadence's collaboration with TSMC is empowering engineers, innovators, and semiconductor businesses to leverage AI-driven design technology to push the limits of productivity, design performance, and scalability designing 3D-ICs.

The AI-Driven Shift in Semiconductor Design

AI technology is rapidly proliferating to multiple applications, necessitating 3D-IC to overcome massive IP integration limitations of single die chips. AI is also transforming the design process itself to overcome the complexity challenges of these large multi-die systems.

The Challenges of Compute-Limited Technologies

The rise of AI has placed unprecedented demands on semiconductor performance for compute-heavy workloads. Traditional monolithic system-on-chips (SoCs) face bottlenecks not in raw computational power but in memory and data communication bandwidth. Progress is further constrained by the reticle limit, which restricts the size of heterogeneous designs on a single chip.

The Breakthrough of 3D-IC and Chiplets

Enter the chiplets and 3D-IC technologies. These approaches enable designers to partition large designs into smaller, modular components (chiplets) that can be stacked or integrated into compact packaging forms. This paradigm shift allows for better system performance, higher yield, and lower production costs—all without being limited by reticle size.

Chiplets and 3D-IC are not just a trend; they are becoming the norm, especially in applications like AI inference, where massive amounts of data must flow seamlessly between processing cores and memory.

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