Emerging Chiplet Ecosystems Enable Optimized Multi-Vendor Designs

By Elad Alon, Blue Cheetah Analog Design

Many hardware and silicon designers consider chiplets a critical enabler for more capable and cost-efficient systems. Chiplets are well established amongst large players that control all components/aspects of a design (i.e., single vendor), and the allure of a "plug and play" chiplet market has garnered significant attention and investment from the industry. Although the industry needs to address some technical and business hurdles before that vision comes to fruition, OEMs and chipmakers can realize most of the benefits of chiplet-based designs today. Specifically, small groups of companies with aligned product strategies and (typically) complementary expertise are forming multi-vendor ecosystems. Within these ecosystems, the companies can coordinate the functionality, requirements, and interfaces of each chiplet (and, of course, the die-to-die interconnects that glue them together) to meet the needs of a specific product or product family. This talk describes chiplet interconnect solutions—die-to-die PHY and link layer—that support all three use cases (single-vendor, multi-vendor ecosystem, and plug-and-play). It outlines how OEMs and chip makers can successfully navigate a multi-vendor ecosystem approach to implement chiplet-based designs today.