Alphawave Reveals Multiprotocol I/O Chiplet Tapeout, Collabs with Arm, Samsung

The high-performance computing (HPC) and AI sectors are rapidly evolving, with growing demands for faster data processing and reduced latency. Among these changes, traditional monolithic chip designs struggle to keep pace with these requirements.

Instead, a shift to chiplets is dominating the industry. But, supporting this shift requires the confluence of technical expertise in many disparate fields, including computing, packaging, and interconnect technologies.

 

Alphawave Semi’s multi-protocol I/O connectivity chiplet is built on TSMC’s 7 nm process.

 

Alphawave Semi has recently made a number of important announcements in the world of chiplets for HPC and AI applications. Let’s take a look at the recent developments from Alphawave Semi to get a better feel for the state of the industry and the direction it's moving toward.

 

Multi-Protocol I/O Connectivity Chiplet

Recently, Alphawave Semi announced the successful tape-out of “the industry’s first off-the-shelf multi-protocol I/O connectivity chiplet on TSMC’s 7nm process.” 

Designed specifically for HPC and AI infrastructure, the chiplet integrates multiple communication protocols, including PCIe, CXL, and Ethernet, into a single silicon device to enhance data throughput and connectivity in demanding computational environments.

To achieve this, the chiplet leverages Alphawave’s advanced SerDes technology, which provides high-speed serial data transmission to allow the chiplet to support data rates up to 112 Gbps. Such high-speed capability significantly reduces latency and increases the overall performance of HPC and AI workloads, enabling rapid data exchange between processors, accelerators, and memory subsystems.

 

Chiplet eye diagrams for all 16 I/Os. (Click to enlarge) 

 

According to the company, an important feature of their chiplet is advanced packaging technology, allowing for integration into larger SoCs or multi-chip modules (MCMs). The modular approach facilitates scalability and flexibility, enabling system designers to tailor connectivity solutions to specific application requirements.

In a similar vein, the chiplet natively supports die-to-die communication, enhancing performance by minimizing signal loss and power consumption compared to traditional interconnect methods.

 

Deal with Samsung Foundry Expanded

Along with the chiplet news, Alphawave Semi also recently announced an expanded partnership with Samsung Foundry to drive advanced semiconductor nodes. 

Specifically, the collaboration will focus on advanced semiconductor nodes such as 3nm and 4nm technologies to achieve higher performance, lower power consumption, and increased integration density to support high-performance computing and data-centric applications. To deliver these advanced solutions, the partnership aims to leverage Samsung Foundry's state-of-the-art fabrication capabilities, including their FinFET and Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor technologies.

Alphawave Semi plans to integrate these advanced technologies into their connectivity IP solutions, which are critical components for enabling high-speed data transfer in modern computing systems. These solutions are expected to support a range of applications, including data centers, AI accelerators, and other high-performance computing environments.

 

Compute Chiplet Partnership with Arm

Finally, Alphawave Semi’s final big announcement of the month came in the form of a new partnership with Arm, focused on advancing high-performance compute chiplet technology.

This partnership will leverage Alphawave's expertise in connectivity and silicon IP and Arm's prowess in high-performance compute architecture. Alphawave Semi brings to the table its advanced high-speed connectivity solutions, including high-bandwidth memory interfaces and high-speed SerDes technology.

Arm's role in this collaboration involves providing its cutting-edge CPU and GPU cores, where Arm's architecture will be central to the compute chiplets, driving complex computations and data processing with high efficiency. Ultimately, the collaboration aims to integrate these connectivity solutions seamlessly with Arm's high-performance compute cores.

 

Alphawave Semi and Arm have partnered to develop next-generation chiplets for HPC. 

 

The collaboration will also emphasize the importance of advanced packaging technologies. The companies have stated that advanced packaging techniques, like 2.5D and 3D stacking, will be explored to enhance the interconnect density and overall performance of the chiplets.

 

Bringing Chiplets and the Industry Together

A field like chiplets is extremely multidisciplinary, requiring collaboration between engineers of different expertise including compute, interconnect, and packaging. With its slew of recent announcements, Alphawave Semi is putting itself at the heart of the chiplet movement, introducing new in-house chiplets and establishing meaningful partnerships with some of the industry’s biggest players. Such developments will be necessary to support the continued transition from monolithic computing solutions to chiplet-based ones.

 

All images used courtesy of Alphawave Semi