Project Chiplet4Future

In recent decades, the great strides seen in semiconductor technology development have largely been achieved by reducing structural widths to scale down transistor size, a trend known as »More Moore«. However, this approach has reached its limits. Complexity and production costs are rising, posing challenges particularly for smaller German and European semiconductor companies. The maximum circuit area is also limited by technology; in the coming years, it won’t be possible to simply build larger circuits with more functionality. Another approach, called »More than Moore«, is seen as a forward-looking alternative. It uses chiplets, in which the circuit functionality is distributed across several units housed in a single package. A uniform interface between chiplets is crucial, but so far, market leaders have made their developments in this area available solely to large customers.

Finding the solution

The Chiplet4Future project aims to bridge the gap in the design and training of professionals for chiplet systems. Drawing on its many years of expertise in the field of novel fabrication and interconnection technologies, the Dresden branch of Fraunhofer IIS aims to develop standards and innovative architectures for chiplets. Existing chiplet solutions often take the simple approach of breaking down circuits that were previously housed on a single circuit board into separate circuit boards, equipping them with the chiplet interface, and ultimately combining them into a chiplet system. This approach fails to take full advantage of the potential of the chiplet concept, however. Doing so requires novel system-level approaches in which, for example, heterogeneous multiprocessor systems and accelerators are implemented on multiple distributed circuit boards and operate partly synchronously, partly asynchronously. These are then connected via innovative networks (network-on-chiplet).

In addition, the project is developing an open-source tool for system exploration in order to analyze the wide variety of system variants. The results are expected to culminate in a heterogeneous chiplet reference platform that will be available to partners after the project ends. This platform will help companies integrate chiplets on their own and will offer comprehensive resources and interfaces.

The Chiplet4Future project focuses on the study of efficient, heterogeneous systems that are optimized for key European applications, such as systems in the automotive industry or mechanical engineering.