Automotive Chiplet Ecosystem Heralds Agility and Flexibility

To learn more about the technical challenges and potential use cases behind chiplet adoption, EE Times Europe spoke to Kurt Herremans, director of imec’s automotive chip program.

By Robert Huntley, EETimes Europe (January 28, 2025)

In late 2024, imec hosted a gathering of automotive semiconductor vendors, EDA organizations, and tier 1 suppliers to debate the evolution of chiplets for automotive applications. At the event, imec launched its Automotive Chiplet Program (ACP) and announced that Arm, ASE, BMW Group, Bosch, Cadence Design Systems, Siemens, SiliconAuto, Synopsys, Tenstorrent, and Valeo were its initial stakeholders. According to imec, the program’s goals are “to evaluate which chiplet architectures and packaging technologies are best suited to support car manufacturers’ specific high-performance computing and strict safety requirements, while striving to extend the benefits of chiplet technology—such as increased flexibility, improved performance, and cost savings—to the entire automotive industry.”

The foundations behind establishing this ecosystem of leading automotive partners are rooted in the belief that existing monolithic chip architectures have struggled to keep pace with the increasingly demanding needs of applications such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) services. The program aims to investigate a more efficient and seamless approach to architecting compute-intensive chips for such specialized services. Chiplets offer opportunities for quick customization with lower development windows and costs but are an expensive route for OEMs if performed in isolation. The program aims to establish a set of chiplet standards so automotive suppliers can safely procure them from the market, knowing they will conform to the industry’s quality and reliability standards.

To learn more about the technical challenges and potential use cases behind chiplet adoption, EE Times Europe spoke to Kurt Herremans, director of imec’s automotive chip program.

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