The Impact of UCIe on Chiplet Design: Lowering Barriers and Driving Innovation

By Kalar Rajendiran

August 19, 2024

The semiconductor industry is experiencing a significant transformation with the advent of chiplet design, a modular approach that breaks down complex chips into smaller, functional blocks called chiplets. A chiplet-based design approach offers numerous advantages, such as improved performance, reduced development costs, and faster time-to-market. This approach improves yield by isolating defects to individual modules, optimizes transistor costs by allowing different manufacturing nodes for different components, and leverages advanced packaging technologies for enhanced performance. The modularity of chiplets supports scalable, customizable designs that accelerate time-to-market and enable targeted optimization for performance, power, and cost.

However, one of the most substantial barriers to widespread adoption has been the lack of standardization in how these chiplets communicate with each other. The Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) standard is poised to change that, making chiplet design more accessible and opening up new opportunities for innovation across the industry. Mayank Bhatnagar, a Product Marketing Director at Cadence gave a talk on this subject at the FMS 2024 Conference in early August.

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