Chiplet Innovation Will Extend Moore's Law & Emerge As Crucial Component In US-China Tech Dominance Rivalry

Semiconductors are at the forefront of the U.S. vs. China struggle for technological superiority. The struggle for technological dominance between the United States and China, exemplified by the strong position of the United States to prohibit the export of semiconductor technology, highlights the importance of technology in selecting the next economic and military superpowers. 

Anurag Bansal, managing director at 13D Research & Strategy, has spent fifteen years researching the convergence of exponential technologies. He claims that these exponential technologies, which include artificial intelligence, DNA sequencing, gene editing, automation, high-performance semiconductors, networking, and renewable energy, will transform corporate and geopolitical landscapes. He discusses the significance of chiplet technology in our quest to add more processing capacity to chips and how China may use it to circumvent U.S. technological limitations.

Anurag emphasized that Chiplet technology is a developing field of study that will assist semiconductors in maintaining their upward trend of getting more powerful. Physical constraints in the traditional semiconductor manufacturing process are driving this modular approach. 

Furthermore, nations such as China, which does not have the most sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing, may be able to develop comparatively advanced chips and compete with U.S. superiority. The fight for technological superiority is heating up and will shift the balance of power. The winners of the twenty-first century will be determined by who is first to create these technologies and, more significantly, the commercial applications that will use them. Semiconductors are one of the key battlegrounds between the United States and China, with tensions rising regularly. China is determined to become self-sufficient, and the United States appears to do everything necessary to prevent this.

Anurag points out that despite semiconductors' central role in the modern economy, maintaining the industry's almost five-decade-long pattern of steady cost and performance development is proving increasingly challenging. Moore's rule, which claims that a microchip's transistor count doubles every two years, has advanced computer technology during the previous few decades. As transistors have reduced to nanoscale size, monolithic circuits—where all components are built on a single silicon piece—have become harder to make. Quantum tunneling and leakage current make scaling transistors harder. Tiny transistor production is too expensive due to lower yield rates.

Chiplets, according to Anurag, might be a game-changer for China's aspirations to challenge the United States' supremacy in chip manufacture and keep Moore's law alive.Chiplets are a new paradigm in the semiconductor industry that is fast altering our conceptions of chip design and fabrication. Chiplets are small, self-contained, modular components that interface with other chiplets to form a full system-on-chip (SoC) on a single piece of silicon. A chiplet may have a memory controller, while another chiplet may contain a collection of processor cores that may be integrated into a larger system. By dividing complicated SoCs into smaller, more controllable components, chiplets provide several advantages.

The ability to independently design and produce chiplets is a major benefit, notes Anurag, since it ensures that each chiplet is optimized for its intended purpose. Memory access control chiplets, for instance, can be fine-tuned for low latency and high bandwidth. In contrast, a chiplet's throughput and power consumption may be tuned for complicated computations.

Anurag underscores that chiplets allow developers to mix components to construct SoCs for specialized purposes. This adaptability will allow designers to adjust each chiplet's performance and power consumption for its job, creating a more efficient and optimized system. Traditional SoCs take longer to commercialize than chiplets due to their modular architecture and manufacturing. Engineers may create and test individual components and iteratively improve semiconductor designs without waiting for an entire SoC. In fast-moving industries like consumer electronics, this saves time and money. 

Anurag reinforces that independent chiplet development and manufacture increase yields. Thus, chiplet manufacturing issues may be isolated from the SoC. This allows faulty chiplets to be removed while the SoC is recovered, reducing waste and enhancing production rates. Eliminating custom SoC designs reduces chiplet development expenses. Chiplets allow developers create customized SoCs by merging pre-existing components. This can cut the cost and time of making a new electrical device.

Chiplets are now utilized in several applications within the semiconductor sector. Anurag adds that one of the most notable instances is the development of high-performance computing (HPC) systems, where chiplets are utilized to build specialized processors that provide extraordinary performance for certain workloads. Chiplets may be integrated to form unique neural network accelerators and other specialized components utilized in creating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems.

Source: Yole Group

Anurag provides evidence of the growth of Chiplets in recent years. A new generation of Intel Xeon processors called Sapphire Rapids is built on chiplet technology and has improved cryptography and artificial intelligence capabilities. Similarly, Intel has created a new chiplet-based GPU architecture called Ponte Vecchio specifically intended for high-performance computing tasks. Chiplet technology is also the foundation of Apple's M1 processor, which drives the most recent generation of Mac computers. A brand-new innovation from TSMC termed "system on integrated chips" uses 3D stacking methods to make it easier to reintegrate chiplets. The first EPYC CPU from AMD has a similar chiplet-based architecture. 

Anurag believes that chiplet technology may significantly influence China's efforts to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency. Chinese enterprises, notably Huawei and Phytium, are developing chiplet-based CPUs. Two Chinese companies have recently displayed CPUs based on chiplets. The BR100, a chiplet-produced general-purpose GPU chip from Biren Technology, was recently introduced as the first of its kind in China. Using chiplet technology to combine two 16-core computers on a single silicon substrate, Loongson produced a 32-core CPU with eight memory channels. Arctic Xiongxin's "Qiming 930" chip was also recently announced. It utilizes chiplet architecture and a 12 nm fabrication method. It is designed for various uses, including AI reasoning, privacy computing, and industrial intelligence.

Anurag advises that investors position themselves to profit from the latest innovations in this dynamic industry. Industry leaders like Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and TSMC are leading chiplet-based system development. These firms are well-equipped to capitalize on the rising demand for chiplet-based goods because of their extensive resources and knowledge of chip design and production.

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**Disclaimer: Views expressed here are personal and do not represent any institution or entity Anurag is associated with.