Intel, AMD, Arm, more partner on new universal chiplet standard

Chipmakers are increasingly shifting towards ‘chiplets,’ best described as blocks of integrated circuits that can be added to chips. However, chiplets often aren’t interoperable — that may soon change.

Several major chip companies, including Intel, AMD, and Arm, joined forces to introduce a standardized system that could enable manufacturers to mix and match chiplets. The news came via a release on Business Wire, but Tom’s Hardware has a big deep dive into it for those interested in all the little details.

For those who don’t need a big deep dive, here are the main takeaways. First, the new standard is called ‘Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express’ or UCIe. The alliance has ratified a UCIe 1.0 specification with several partners, including Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Meta (Facebook), Samsung, and TSMC.

The system enables a “die-to-die interconnect with a physical layer, protocol stack, software model, and compliance testing to enable end users to easily mix and match chiplet components from a multi-vendor ecosystem for System-on-Chip (SoC) construction, including customized SoC.”

Image credit: Business Wire

As Engadget points out, the main appeal of this approach is that companies could speed up the development of CPUs and SoCs by using existing chiplet designs rather than creating their own. Those that do create their own chiplets can also benefit by selling them to other companies, enabling more products to feature those chiplets. Moreover, standardized chiplets could enable faster time-to-market and provide more consistent performance.

Of course, it’s worth keeping in mind that things are still very much in the early stages. It could still be years before UCIe is fully defined and ready for wide adoption, and perhaps longer still before manufacturers start making use of it.

You can check out the UCIe release here, or head to Tom’s Guide for a more detailed looked at the new standard.

Source: Business Wire Via: Engadget