Top-Down Vs. Bottom-Up Chiplet Design

Third party chiplets are hitting the market as chiplet models evolve. Who’s calling the shots isn’t clear yet.

By Ann Mutschler, Semiconductor Engineering (November 26th, 2024)

Chiplets are gaining widespread attention across the semiconductor industry, but for this approach to really take off commercially it will require more standards, better modeling technologies and methodologies, and a hefty amount of investment and experimentation.

The case for chiplets is well understood. They can speed up time to market with consistent results, at whatever process node works best for a particular workload or application, and often with better yield than a large, monolithic SoC. But there is an underlying tug-of-war underway between large, vertically integrated players that want to tightly define the socket specifications for chiplets, and a broad swath of startups, systems companies, and government agencies pushing a top-down approach that allows chiplet developers to explore new and different options based on standardized interconnects.

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