For over five decades, Moore’s Law guided semiconductor progress by shrinking transistors and doubling chip density roughly every two years. But as process nodes have reached the sub-5nm scale, the cost, complexity, and physical limits of further scaling have made it increasingly unsustainable as a sole innovation strategy. In response, the microelectronics industry is pivoting to an equally transformative approach: chiplets and heterogeneous integration (HI).
Rather than building a single, monolithic system-on-chip (SoC), designers are now decomposing large chips into smaller, functional blocks—called chiplets—that are manufactured separately and integrated into a single package. Each chiplet can be built using the optimal process node for its function (e.g., logic at 5nm, I/O at 14nm, analog at 28nm), and assembled using high-density interconnect technologies such as 2.5D interposers or 3D die stacking. This architectural shift is enabling continued performance gains even as Moore’s Law slows.
The benefits of chiplet-based design are substantial:
- Improved Yield and Lower Cost: Smaller die sizes reduce the likelihood of manufacturing defects, improving yield per wafer. This significantly lowers costs for complex designs, particularly in AI, server, and HPC domains.
- Design Flexibility: Companies can mix-and-match validated chiplets from different process technologies or vendors, speeding up time-to-market and enabling modular product families.
- Thermal and Power Optimization: Sensitive analog or RF functions can be physically separated from high-heat logic blocks, simplifying thermal design and improving power integrity.
One of the most prominent adopters is AMD, whose Ryzen and EPYC processors use a multi-chip module (MCM) architecture to combine CPU, cache, and I/O chiplets. Intel has also committed heavily to chiplet designs with its Foveros and EMIB (Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge) technologies, which enable vertical and lateral chiplet connectivity. The upcoming Meteor Lake processors exemplify this approach by separating compute, GPU, and AI acceleration functions into distinct chiplets.
The U.S. Department of Defense and DARPA have further elevated the strategy by launching the CHIPS (Common Heterogeneous Integration and IP Reuse Strategies) initiative. This program promotes the development of a government-backed chiplet ecosystem, including secure packaging protocols and interoperability standards. The goal is to accelerate domestic capability in building mission-critical systems that require flexible, trusted supply chains.
However, chiplet integration also introduces new challenges:
- Interconnect Bottlenecks: Communication between chiplets requires ultra-dense, low-latency interconnects. Emerging interfaces like UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) are aiming to standardize this, much like PCIe did for discrete components.
- Thermal Management and Warpage: As chips are stacked or spread laterally, managing heat and mechanical stress across the package becomes more difficult.
- EDA Complexity: Traditional electronic design automation (EDA) tools were not designed for multi-die systems. New tools must simulate power, timing, thermal, and signal integrity across dies and interposers in real-time.
From a supply chain perspective, chiplets also change the economics of fabrication. They allow companies to reuse IP blocks, reduce dependencies on bleeding-edge fabs, and shift more value into packaging and assembly. According to a 2024 report by Yole Group, the advanced packaging market—including chiplets, 2.5D/3D integration, and interposers—is expected to exceed $80 billion by 2028, growing faster than the overall semiconductor market.
Looking ahead, chiplet design is likely to be central in domains such as:
- AI and Data Center Accelerators (e.g., combining compute, memory, and I/O chiplets)
- 5G and 6G Radios (e.g., integrating RF front ends and beamforming modules)
- Edge Devices (e.g., combining sensor, logic, and inference chiplets in ultra-low-power configurations)
As Moore’s Law plateaus, heterogeneous integration offers a new way to scale—across dimensions, disciplines, and design domains. For microelectronics professionals, the shift to chiplets is more than a packaging trend; it’s a fundamental rethinking of how systems are architected, built, and evolved.