Chiplets

The evolution of CPUs and GPUs, packing ever more computing power into ever smaller packages, is inexorably nearing its commercially viable and, soon, physical limits. Chips are still expected to become faster with every generation, but the rate of growth is already slowing. As the technology’s evolution is coming up to this crossroads, chiplets represent the future of processors.

Conventional monolithic processors are increasingly proving a problematic option, expensive and prone to defects. To maintain the historical upward trend in computing power, the paradigms of chip design need to be revisited. In the place of single monolithic chips, the modular principles of chiplet design bring together several more easily produced parts of a semiconductor assembly: Highly integrated units are broken down into smaller base units; standard interfaces use a modular system to allow so-called IPs to be reused and to speed up updating and redesign cycles.

This new paradigm of semiconductor design promises greater performance, which is sorely needed to keep up with the increasingly performance-hungry data processing needed in future applications like driverless cars, Industry 4.0, or the IoT. Mounting and bonding are an important technological driver for this, and Fraunhofer IZM is ready to contribute its proven expertise as a reliable research partner in this area.