Arm’s Chiplet System Architecture eyes ecosystem sweet spot
Arm has announced the availability of the first public specification drafted around its Chiplet System Architecture (CSA), a set of system partitioning and chiplet connectivity standards harnessed in a design ecosystem supported by over 60 companies. The companies that are part of the CSA initiative include ADTechnology, Alphawave Semi, AMI, Cadence, Jaguar Micro, Kalray, Rebellions, Siemens, and Synopsys.
CSA aims to offer industry-wide standards and frameworks by facilitating the reuse of specialized chiplets, and thus address the fragmentation caused by compatibility issues in chiplet design. It provides a shared understanding of defining and connecting chiplets while developing composable system-on-chips (SoCs).
A couple of recent announcements show how semiconductor firms are employing CSA to build chiplets as part of Arm Total Design, a platform for deploying chiplet-based compute subsystems. Arm Total Design facilitates custom silicon solutions powered by Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystems (CSS), which includes processor cores, IPs, software, and design tools.
Take the case of Alphawave Semi, which has combined its proprietary I/O dies with an Arm Neoverse CSS-powered chiplet. In this chiplet design, Alphawave Semi has employed AMBA CHI chip-to-chip (C2C) architecture specification to connect artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators.
Figure 1 The block diagram shows a chiplet’s major design building blocks. Source: Alphawave Semi
ADTechnology, another member of Arm’s CSA initiative, has utilized Neoverse CSS V3 technology to create a CPU chiplet for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI/ML training and inference applications. In this chiplet, ADTechnology has incorporated Rebellions’ REBEL AI accelerator; the chiplet design is implemented on Samsung Foundry’s 2-nm gate-all-around (GAA) process node, which has been standardized in the CSA ecosystem.
Figure 2 ADTechnology’s CPU chiplet is powered by Neoverse CSS V3 technology. Source: Arm
AMI, also a member of CSA initiative, is contributing its firmware expertise to accelerate the development of custom chiplet solutions. AMI, the first independent firmware vendor in the Arm Total Design ecosystem, offers modular framework for separating the compute and I/O subsystems. Its pre-configured and pre-tested production quality modules for the reusable chiplets streamline the time and resources required for this stage of development.
A multitude of industry-wide chiplet initiatives—spanning from Arm Total Design to Neoverse CSS to CSA—is a testament to how Arm sees the emergence of chiplets as a major opportunity. It also highlights how Arm sees its place as both chiplet solution provider and ecosystem builder.
The ecosystem-building part is especially crucial because RISC-V companies are also making inroads in the chiplets realm.
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