Power Tradeoffs for Chiplets: What Designers Need to Know

By NaomiM

August 20, 2025

The rise of chiplets in advanced system design presents opportunities as well as challenges, particularly in managing power tradeoffs. Unlike traditional system-on-chip (SoC) designs, chiplets involve complex power delivery due to their multi-die structure.

Read more to learn about power tradeoffs for chiplets and how you can go from managing early-stage power models to ensuring power integrity across interconnected dies. The transition from a single dedicated package for an entire system to multi-die configurations significantly alters the design process, requiring careful tradeoffs to maintain power integrity.

The Complexity of Power Delivery in Chiplets

Unlike traditional single-die systems, chiplets necessitate multiple types of packaging―interposers, 3D stacks, or even direct wire bonds. Each packaging style imposes unique power delivery challenges, such as maintaining signal integrity or dealing with voltage regulation across dies.

For example, in older designs, you worked with a simple power delivery hierarchy—a clean supply was assumed at the power pins, and everything downstream was calculated predictably. Now, including interposers and other packaging elements requires accounting for additional resistance, inductance, and potential noise issues.
Each chiplet influences others in terms of power supply, noise, and voltage levels, making early design decisions crucial. Considerations like micro-bump or through-silicon vias (TSVs) placement impact the entire system's performance.

Early planning is paramount in chiplet design—more so than in traditional SoC development. With so many factors influencing power delivery, you must simulate and evaluate tradeoffs long before finalizing designs.

The Role of Early Power Models

Creating early power delivery models can answer vital questions, such as:

• Will our multi-die packaging meet power integrity requirements?
• How many TSVs are needed to maintain signal and power integrity?
• Are the power constraints of interconnected chiplets being satisfied?
• Is the proposed system design within acceptable noise margins?

These models provide a sandbox for exploring "what-if" scenarios, enabling fast iterations during the conceptual stages of system design. By answering these questions early, designers ensure they are "in the ballpark" when moving forward with detailed implementation.

Navigating Power Tradeoffs During Simulation

Tradeoffs are an inherent part of chiplet design. Finding the right compromises is vital when balancing performance against power efficiency or improving noise resilience versus increasing design complexity.

Design exploration using iterative simulations can refine key parameters like TSV counts, bump placement, and power plane design, ensuring the overall system meets its constraints. Once an optimal system architecture is determined, you can drill deeper into the specifics of individual chiplets.

Power modeling is no longer a one-step process. You need to blend traditional techniques for single-package power analysis with new methodologies tailored to multi-die systems. Building these methodologies efficiently requires tools to manage increasingly complex requirements without overwhelming engineers.

Key Challenges in Detailed Implementation

Once early-stage models provide a functional starting point, the next focus shifts to fine-tuning the power delivery of the individual chiplets.

• Cross-Die Dependencies: Every chiplet must function in isolation and within the broader ecosystem of interconnected components. Noise, power supply fluctuations, and thermal concerns from neighboring dies can propagate throughout the system. This requires far more detailed modeling than traditional monolithic designs, where the package served as the clear boundary for power delivery.
• Packaging Tradeoffs: Different packaging styles—3D stacking, wire bonding, or interposers—require power delivery and thermal management considerations. Each design decision impacts TSV allocation, interconnect density, and material choice.

Charting a Path Forward

To successfully implement chiplets while managing power tradeoffs, you must adopt a holistic approach using advanced 3D-IC design platforms and simulation tools, such as the Cadence Integrity 3D-IC Platform and Voltus IC Power Integrity Solution, to account for the interaction between system- and chip-level power requirements.

Best Practices for Managing Chiplet Power Tradeoffs

• Invest in early-stage models by using simple, early models to simulate tradeoffs and meet constraints before committing to a design workflow.
• Choose the right tools to enable fast "what-if" analysis to explore multiple packaging styles and power delivery networks.
• Ensure that dependencies between chiplets are fully modeled and accounted for, including noise propagation and thermal impacts.
• Iterate and refine continuously by treating power modeling as an iterative process, tuning parameters and revisiting tradeoffs as designs mature.

Future of Chiplets Through Power Delivery Optimization

The shift to chiplets transforms how power delivery is considered in system design. While the challenges are non-trivial, they open the door to more scalable, cost-efficient, and versatile systems. By focusing on early planning, advanced simulation, and iterative refinement, companies can overcome the complexities and pave the way for the future of multi-die chip architectures.

The success of chiplets hinges on effectively understanding and managing power tradeoffs. With the right methodologies and tools, you can optimize power distribution for enhanced performance and efficiency.

Learn more about Cadence Chiplet Solutions.