HexaMesh: Chiplet Topologies Inspired by Nature

By Timothy Prickett Morgan, The Next Platform

With the reticle limit for chip manufacturing pretty much set in stone (pun intended) at 26 millimeters by 33 millimeters down to 2 nanometer transistor sizes with extreme ultraviolet lithography techniques and being cut in half to 26 millimeters by 16.5 millimeters for the High-NA extreme ultraviolet lithography needed to push below 2 nanometer transistor sizes, chiplets are inevitable and monolithic dies are absolutely going to become a thing of the past.

And so the question arises: When it comes to large complexes of chiplets, what is the best shape for a chiplet, and what is the optimal arrangement of these chiplets and the interconnects that link them together into a virtual monolith? (Again, pun intended.) Researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Bologna played a little game of chiplet Tetris to try to find out, and came up with a neat configuration they call HexaMesh.

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