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Posts Tagged 'chiplet-based SoCs'

August 13, 2025

Chiplets Turn 10: Here are Ten Things to Know

By Michael Kanellos, Head of Influencer Relations, Marvell

Chiplets—devices made up of smaller, specialized cores linked together to function like a unified device—have dramatically transformed semiconductors over the past decade. Here’s a quick overview of their history and where the design concept goes next.

1. Initially, they went by the name RAMP

In 2006, Dave Patterson, the storied professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, and his lab published a paper describing how semiconductors will shift from monolithic silicon to devices where different dies are connected and combined into a package that, to the rest of the system, acts like a single device.¹

While the paper also coined the term chiplet, the Berkeley team preferred RAMP (Research Accelerator for Multiple Processors).

2. In Silicon Valley fashion, the early R&D took place in a garage

Marvell co-founder and former CEO Sehat Sutardja started experimenting with combining different chips into a unified package in the 2010s in his garage, according to journalist Junko Yoshida.² In 2015, he unveiled the MoChi (Modular Chip) concept, often credited as the first commercial platform for chiplets, in a keynote at ISSCC in February 2015.³

The first products came out a few months later in October.

“The introduction of Marvell’s AP806 MoChi module is the first step in creating a new process that can change the way that the industry designs chips,” wrote Linley Gwennap in Microprocessor Report.⁴

An early MoChi concept combining CPUs, a GPU and a FLC (final level cache) controller for distributing data across flash and DRAM for optimizing power. Credit: Microprocessor Forum.

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July 19, 2023

Marvell Joins Imec Automotive Chiplet Initiative to Facilitate Compute SoCs for Super-human Sensing

By Willard Tu, Associate VP, Product Marketing – Automotive Compute, Marvell

Marvell is excited to announce that we’ve joined the automotive chiplet initiative coordinated by imec, a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. Imec has formed an informal ecosystem of leading companies from multiple automotive industry segments to address the challenge of bringing multi-chiplet compute modules to the automotive market.

The goal of imec’s automotive chiplet initiative is to address the design challenges that arise from ever-increasing data movement, processing, storage and security requirements. These demands complicate the automotive manufacturers’ desire for scalable performance to address different vehicle classes, while reducing costs and development time and ensuring consistent quality, reliability and safety.

And these demands will be made even more intense by the coming era of super-human sensing. The fusion of data from multi-spectral cameras (visible and infrared), radar and LiDAR will enable “vision” beyond human capability. Such sensor fusion will be a critical requirement for safe autonomous driving.

Source: imec presentation at ITF World, May 2023

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