Securing the new chiplet era of semiconductor design

By Pim Tuyls, Intrinsic ID

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Chip designers are on the frontlines of innovation. Today’s advances in consumer electronics, medical devices, and autonomous driving, as well as high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) systems, all require increasingly complex chip designs.

As chip designs continue to grow more complicated, pushing the limits of Moore’s Law, it is becoming increasingly difficult to fit everything onto a single die. This is giving way to a new era in chip design in the form of chiplets, which are smaller, independent semiconductor components that can be combined to create more complex systems.

Chiplets are a new frontier for semiconductor innovation and represent a significant shift in the traditional monolithic approach to chip design and manufacturing. Rather than creating a semiconductor chip as a single, complete die, chiplets offer a modular approach, providing increased flexibility, improved yield, and lower costs. Chiplets can be designed and manufactured separately, then combined on a larger substrate to create a complete system, which is typically called a System-in-Package (SiP). When it comes to manufacturing, chiplets can scale down to new technology nodes easier, resulting in lower costs and faster time to market, while implementing specific functions at their optimal technology node. This is one reason the Gartner Group predicts that, by 2026, 20% of all semiconductor devices shipped will incorporate advanced 3D packaging technology, up from less than 1% in 2021.

Chiplets are rising in popularity because they enable manufacturers to create systems with more features and higher performance without having to design and manufacture all the components on a single chip. This is especially useful for complex systems, enabling applications leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, and high-performance computing. Additionally, chiplets can be easily upgraded or replaced in future iterations of the device, thereby allowing for easier maintenance and longer product lifetimes.

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