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Chiplets are separate dies that come from different wafers. (It used to be called multi-chip modules (MCM) back in the day but now it's chiplets.) You can see t

by wmf 8mo ago

Chiplets are separate dies that come from different wafers. (It used to be called multi-chip modules (MCM) back in the day but now it's chiplets.) You can see the chiplets pretty clearly in photos of e.g. AMD Ryzen. The benefit of multiple dies on one package is that on-package wires are denser and shorter which increases performance. Multiple chiplets on an interposer is even better. https://imapsource.org/article/128222-enabling-heterogenous-integration-through-chiplet-architectures.pdf https://imapsource.org/article/128222-enabling-heterogenous-...

LoganDark 8mo ago
Wait, aren't multi-chip modules assembled out of chiplets?
- nerdsniper 8mo ago
  Sort of - there's some distinction in the "multi-chip" vs "multi-chiplet". To some degree though, it's true in the sense of: "A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet". The explanation by 'kurthr provides some insight as to why we don't use the term MCM for them today, because the term would imply that they're not integrated as tightly as they are today. The best example of MCM's are probably Intel’s Pentium D and Core 2 Quad. In these older "MCM" designs, generally the multiple chips were mostly fully working chips - they each had their own last-level (e.g. L3) cache (LLC). They also happened to be manufactured on the same lithography node. When a core on Die A needed data that a core on Die B was working on, Die B had to send the data off the CPU entirely, down the motherboard's Front Side Bus (FSB), into the system RAM, and then Die A had to retrieve it from the RAM. IBM POWER4 and POWER5 MCM's did share L3 cache though. So parent was 'wrong' that "chiplets" were ever called MCM's. But right that "chips designed with multiple chiplet-looking-things" did used to be called "MCM's". Today's 'chiplets' term implies that the pieces aren't fully-functioning by themselves, they're more like individual "organs". Functionality like I/O, memory controllers, and LLC are split off and manufactured on separate wafers/nodes. In the case of memory controllers that might be a bit confusing because back in the days of MCM's these were not in the same silicon, rather a separate chip entirely on the motherboard, but I digress. Also MCM's lacked the kind of high-bandwidth, low-latency fabric for CPU's to communicate more directly with each other. For the Pentiums, that was organic substrates (the usual green PCB material) and routing copper traces between the dies. For the IBM's, that was an advanced ceramic-glass substrate, which had much higher bandwidth than PCB traces but still required a lot of space to route all the copper traces (latency taking a hit) and generated a lot of heat. Today we use silicon for those interconnects, which gives exemplary bandwidth+latency+heat performance.
  - stinkbeetle 8mo ago
    > So parent was 'wrong' that "chiplets" were ever called MCM's. But right that "chips designed with multiple chiplet-looking-things" did used to be called "MCM's". No, chiplets were called MCMs. IBM and others as you noted had chip(lets) in MCMs that were not "fully-functioning" by themselves. > Also MCM's lacked the kind of high-bandwidth, low-latency fabric for CPU's to communicate more directly with each other. For the Pentiums, that was organic substrates (the usual green PCB material) and routing copper traces between the dies. For the IBM's, that was an advanced ceramic-glass substrate, which had much higher bandwidth than PCB traces but still required a lot of space to route all the copper traces (latency taking a hit) and generated a lot of heat. Today we use silicon for those interconnects, which gives exemplary bandwidth+latency+heat performance. This all just smells like revisionist history to make the name be consistent with previous naming. IBM's MCMs had incredibly high bandwidth low latency interconnects. Core<->L3 is much more important and latency critical than core+cache cluster <-> memory or other core+cache cluster, for example. And IBM and others had silicon interposers, TSVs, and other very advanced packaging and interconnection technology decades ago too, e.g., https://indico.cern.ch/event/209454/contributions/415011/attachments/325222/453566/AIDA_Industry_Trends_04_03_13.pdf https://indico.cern.ch/event/209454/contributions/415011/att... The real story is much simpler. MCM did not have a great name particularly in consumer space as CPUs and memory controllers and things consolidated to one die which was (at the time) the superior solution. Then reticle limit, yield equations, etc., conspired to turn the tables and it has more recently come to be that multi chip is superior (for some things), so some bright spark probably from a marketing department decided to call them chiplets instead of MCMs. That's about it. Aside, funnily enough IBM actually used to (and may still), and quite possibly others, actually call various cookie cutter blocks in a chip (e.g., a cluster of cores and caches, or a memory controller block, or a PCIe block), chiplets. From https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp5102.pdf https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp5102.pdf, "The most amount of energy can be saved when a whole POWER8 chiplet enters the winkle mode. In this mode, the entire chiplet is turned off, including the L3".
    - LoganDark 8mo ago
      > No, chiplets were called MCMs. IBM and others as you noted had chip(lets) in MCMs that were not "fully-functioning" by themselves. I don't follow; you seem to be using "chiplet" to directly mean a multi-chip module, whereas I consider "chiplet" to be a component of a multi-chip module. An assembly of multiple chiplets would not itself be "a chiplet", but a multi-chip module. This is also why I don't follow why the term "chiplet" would replace the term "multi-chip module", because to me, a multi-chip module is not even a chiplet, it's only built with chiplets. Are chiplets ever more than a single die? Conversely, are there multi-chip modules of only a single die? At least one of these must be true for "chiplet" and "multi-chip module" even to overlap.
- wmf 8mo ago
  Putting aside the terminology, a lot of people would have you believe that chiplets started in 2017 but they existed for 20-30 years before that.
kurthr 8mo ago
Generally, multi-chip-modules are for multiple die attached to (advanced) PCB backplanes, while CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) and Foveros are using (passive) silicon backplanes. It radically increases bump and interconnect density.
- monocasa 8mo ago
  I don't think chiplets require or even are even generally seen with silicon backplanes yet, otherwise you'd be leaving out stuff like AMD's CPUs. And from there, stuff like the Vac 9000's packaging were very advanced for the time designs that I'd hesitate to call PCBs unless we're calling all organic packaging PCBs now.
- adrian_b 8mo ago
  The silicon backplanes are also soldered on (advanced) PCB backplanes, so they are just interposers. I do not think that using various kinds of silicon bridges warrants a change in name. It should be fine to call any such product that uses multiple chips as a MCM (multi-chip module). Even for consumer CPUs, MCMs have already a long history, e.g. with AMD Bulldozer variants, or with the earlier Pentium and Athlon that had the L2 cache memory on a separate chip. The word "chiplet" is relatively new and its appearance is justified for naming a chip whose purpose is to be a part of a MCM, instead of being packaged separately. A modern chiplet should be designed specifically for this purpose, because its I/O buffers need very different characteristics for driving the internal interfaces of the MCM, in comparison with driving interfaces on a normal PCB, i.e. they can be smaller and faster.

by wmf 8mo ago

LoganDark 8mo ago

Wait, aren't multi-chip modules assembled out of chiplets?

nerdsniper 8mo ago
Sort of - there's some distinction in the "multi-chip" vs "multi-chiplet". To some degree though, it's true in the sense of: "A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet". The explanation by 'kurthr provides some insight as to why we don't use the term MCM for them today, because the term would imply that they're not integrated as tightly as they are today. The best example of MCM's are probably Intel’s Pentium D and Core 2 Quad. In these older "MCM" designs, generally the multiple chips were mostly fully working chips - they each had their own last-level (e.g. L3) cache (LLC). They also happened to be manufactured on the same lithography node. When a core on Die A needed data that a core on Die B was working on, Die B had to send the data off the CPU entirely, down the motherboard's Front Side Bus (FSB), into the system RAM, and then Die A had to retrieve it from the RAM. IBM POWER4 and POWER5 MCM's did share L3 cache though. So parent was 'wrong' that "chiplets" were ever called MCM's. But right that "chips designed with multiple chiplet-looking-things" did used to be called "MCM's". Today's 'chiplets' term implies that the pieces aren't fully-functioning by themselves, they're more like individual "organs". Functionality like I/O, memory controllers, and LLC are split off and manufactured on separate wafers/nodes. In the case of memory controllers that might be a bit confusing because back in the days of MCM's these were not in the same silicon, rather a separate chip entirely on the motherboard, but I digress. Also MCM's lacked the kind of high-bandwidth, low-latency fabric for CPU's to communicate more directly with each other. For the Pentiums, that was organic substrates (the usual green PCB material) and routing copper traces between the dies. For the IBM's, that was an advanced ceramic-glass substrate, which had much higher bandwidth than PCB traces but still required a lot of space to route all the copper traces (latency taking a hit) and generated a lot of heat. Today we use silicon for those interconnects, which gives exemplary bandwidth+latency+heat performance.
- stinkbeetle 8mo ago
  > So parent was 'wrong' that "chiplets" were ever called MCM's. But right that "chips designed with multiple chiplet-looking-things" did used to be called "MCM's". No, chiplets were called MCMs. IBM and others as you noted had chip(lets) in MCMs that were not "fully-functioning" by themselves. > Also MCM's lacked the kind of high-bandwidth, low-latency fabric for CPU's to communicate more directly with each other. For the Pentiums, that was organic substrates (the usual green PCB material) and routing copper traces between the dies. For the IBM's, that was an advanced ceramic-glass substrate, which had much higher bandwidth than PCB traces but still required a lot of space to route all the copper traces (latency taking a hit) and generated a lot of heat. Today we use silicon for those interconnects, which gives exemplary bandwidth+latency+heat performance. This all just smells like revisionist history to make the name be consistent with previous naming. IBM's MCMs had incredibly high bandwidth low latency interconnects. Core<->L3 is much more important and latency critical than core+cache cluster <-> memory or other core+cache cluster, for example. And IBM and others had silicon interposers, TSVs, and other very advanced packaging and interconnection technology decades ago too, e.g., https://indico.cern.ch/event/209454/contributions/415011/attachments/325222/453566/AIDA_Industry_Trends_04_03_13.pdf https://indico.cern.ch/event/209454/contributions/415011/att... The real story is much simpler. MCM did not have a great name particularly in consumer space as CPUs and memory controllers and things consolidated to one die which was (at the time) the superior solution. Then reticle limit, yield equations, etc., conspired to turn the tables and it has more recently come to be that multi chip is superior (for some things), so some bright spark probably from a marketing department decided to call them chiplets instead of MCMs. That's about it. Aside, funnily enough IBM actually used to (and may still), and quite possibly others, actually call various cookie cutter blocks in a chip (e.g., a cluster of cores and caches, or a memory controller block, or a PCIe block), chiplets. From https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp5102.pdf https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp5102.pdf, "The most amount of energy can be saved when a whole POWER8 chiplet enters the winkle mode. In this mode, the entire chiplet is turned off, including the L3".
  - LoganDark 8mo ago
    > No, chiplets were called MCMs. IBM and others as you noted had chip(lets) in MCMs that were not "fully-functioning" by themselves. I don't follow; you seem to be using "chiplet" to directly mean a multi-chip module, whereas I consider "chiplet" to be a component of a multi-chip module. An assembly of multiple chiplets would not itself be "a chiplet", but a multi-chip module. This is also why I don't follow why the term "chiplet" would replace the term "multi-chip module", because to me, a multi-chip module is not even a chiplet, it's only built with chiplets. Are chiplets ever more than a single die? Conversely, are there multi-chip modules of only a single die? At least one of these must be true for "chiplet" and "multi-chip module" even to overlap.
wmf 8mo ago
Putting aside the terminology, a lot of people would have you believe that chiplets started in 2017 but they existed for 20-30 years before that.

kurthr 8mo ago

Generally, multi-chip-modules are for multiple die attached to (advanced) PCB backplanes, while CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) and Foveros are using (passive) silicon backplanes. It radically increases bump and interconnect density.

monocasa 8mo ago
I don't think chiplets require or even are even generally seen with silicon backplanes yet, otherwise you'd be leaving out stuff like AMD's CPUs. And from there, stuff like the Vac 9000's packaging were very advanced for the time designs that I'd hesitate to call PCBs unless we're calling all organic packaging PCBs now.
adrian_b 8mo ago
The silicon backplanes are also soldered on (advanced) PCB backplanes, so they are just interposers. I do not think that using various kinds of silicon bridges warrants a change in name. It should be fine to call any such product that uses multiple chips as a MCM (multi-chip module). Even for consumer CPUs, MCMs have already a long history, e.g. with AMD Bulldozer variants, or with the earlier Pentium and Athlon that had the L2 cache memory on a separate chip. The word "chiplet" is relatively new and its appearance is justified for naming a chip whose purpose is to be a part of a MCM, instead of being packaged separately. A modern chiplet should be designed specifically for this purpose, because its I/O buffers need very different characteristics for driving the internal interfaces of the MCM, in comparison with driving interfaces on a normal PCB, i.e. they can be smaller and faster.