Semiconductor startups built 14.3 billion factories, and more than 100 manufacturers have laid out Chiplet

According to Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao reported that semiconductor startup Silicon Box will spend $2 billion (about 14.343 billion yuan) to set up an advanced semiconductor manufacturing foundry in Tampines, Singapore, consolidating Singapore's position as a global semiconductor manufacturing hub. Founded in 2021, Silicon Box was founded by the founder of American chipmaker Marvell, Suo Wen Chou, his wife, Weili Dai, and current CEO BJ Han, focusing on Chiplet design. According to the report, Silicon Box's construction of the semiconductor manufacturing plant is aimed at expanding the use of "Chiplet" technology. According to reports, its new factory area of 73,000 square meters, mainly manufacturing semiconductor small chip (chiplet) interconnect technology for artificial intelligence chips and high-performance computing.

Reduce chip manufacturing costs

International chip giants have entered Chiplet

Chiplet, often translated as "core" or "small chip," is an important way to continuously improve the integration and chip computing power of system-on-chip (SoC) integration after the development of the post-Moore era. Chiplet isomerization technology can not only break through the blockade of advanced process, but also greatly improve the yield of large chips, reduce the complexity of design and design cost, and reduce the cost of chip manufacturing.

As chip manufacturing costs have skyrocketed in recent years, the global chip industry has increasingly embraced Chiplet technology in a race to make transistors small enough to be measured in atomic numbers. With the gradual landing of the Chiplet concept, many international chip giants have entered Chiplet.

Among them, the most well-known in the industry is the establishment of the Universal Small Chip Interconnection (UCIe) industry alliance. At the beginning of 2022, the UCIe Industrial Alliance, initiated by semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel, AMD, Arm, ASE, Qualcomm, Samsung and TSMC, as well as more than 10 technology industry giants such as Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft, was formally established.

It is reported that UCIe is an open industry alliance to promote UCIe technical standards, build a perfect ecology, and make it a future on-chip interconnection standard for heterogeneous packaged small chips (Chiplet).

At present, with the UCIe standard open to the whole industry, its member enterprises are also expanding rapidly. According to Global Semiconductor Watch, according to the information statistics released on the official website of the UCIe Industry Alliance, at present, the number of UCIe alliance members has exceeded 100.

In addition to the original founding members, they include Nvidia, Huabang Power, Amkor, Applied Materials, Analog Devices, Cadence, GLC, Micron, Microchip, Mediatek, SK Hynix, Synopsys, Marvell, Broadcom, Ali, Tongfu Micro Power, JDC Technology, Uniguntri, Liji Storage, and others.

Dr. Zhang Weifeng, chief scientist of heterogeneous computing at Alibaba Cloud, previously said that as a common and open standard, UCIe will bring great benefits in terms of interoperability and cost to the global Chiplet ecosystem.