3 ms·
This means better yeilds out of each wafer. This can potentially help keep scaling alive. Aside from the question of "can we do it", there's always the other q
by ip26 7y ago
This means better yeilds out of each wafer.
This can potentially help keep scaling alive. Aside from the question of "can we do it", there's always the other question, "at what cost". Instead of an "impossible" tech node, it's conceivable that we could hit a "too expensive to be worth it" tech node. Thus any scheme to keep yields up helps delay that point.
- hinkley 7y agoChips are manufactured There are many things in this world where one can, for a premium, through your social network, or dumb luck at a second hand store, acquire something that is relatively unique. But if you want something cheap, you are left with what can be made reliably. And if you want to keep buying it in the future, that thing has to be made and sold at a profit. So the only chips you can get are the ones that can be made all day every day. Chiplets are 'just' more of them. Where 'just' means 'assuming you have a cost-effective way to manage the logistics of processing, testing, and assembling an order of magnitude more pieces of inventory, and that the error rate in those processes is less than the difference in yields between chiplets and giant monolithic chips'. Writing that down gave me some new appreciation for a side comment that was made in a chip design interview posted here this year. The guest mentioned how important manufacturing processes are today in chip design, and I don't think any of us outside of that industry understand the smallest fraction of that.