In August, Chiplet brought a wave of semiconductor rhythms into the stock market with a wave of hot concepts. VeriSilicon, Canadian, Tongfu, Huatian, etc. have turned from green to red, and have ushered in popularity. How many junior leeks in the stock market have been cut countless times. When the editor met Chiplet, of course, he had to learn honestly. By the way, we should see if there is any good for our own module industry, and also touch the light of semiconductor communication! Servidor de puerto serie único
The audience may not know what a Chiplet is. In my understanding, the primary purpose of this technology is to make chips with building blocks and save money. Chip blocks with different functions are small building blocks. There are high-end and delicate building blocks, and of course, there are general ones. They are made according to different levels and costs and then combined into a fully functional chip.
Almost all mobile phones, home appliances, tools, etc. involved in life now involve chip control, and how to make chips is a very complicated and big problem. Nowadays, the technology is becoming more and more advanced. For example, mobile phone processors and PC processors are clamoring for a few nanometers of XXFET technology every day. If you are a senior digital party, you know all kinds of parameters well, and you are willing to donate generously for the crystallization of these advanced technologies. However, for ordinary electronic products, such as the RF module products involved in the editor, what we pursue is stability and reliability, serving the public. Naturally, the internal chips that make up the modules do not necessarily use cutting-edge technology, but the mature and stable process brings reliable supply and high yield. On the other hand, even if Chiplet is currently so hot, there is still a long way to go before it is commercialized and spread to the RF front-end.
Whether the chiplet technology can directly integrate the small building blocks of the radio frequency unit, the editor thinks this is definitely possible, and it is the general trend. In fact, the field of RF front-end has gone through the evolution from discrete devices to modularization in the past ten years. The integration of components from different manufacturers into modules has become very popular in the field of RF front-end. The modularized application reduces the development cost of many IoT applications. At the same time, professional RF software and hardware are concentrated in a small-sized module, and customers can use a very simple microprocessor to realize complex communication functions.
But the editor also said before that the chiplet concept still needs to break through many obstacles. Take the RF part as an example. First of all, this part belongs to analog components. The analog layout of the chip is more troublesome than the digital layout. Although the integration is beneficial, it obviously increases the design difficulty. Secondly, such as crosstalk problems, isolation problems, heating problems (PA), reliability signal integrity, etc. of RF front-end modules, companies responsible for all aspects of chip manufacturing need to work together to solve them. The UCIe organization established in March this year is Responsible for standardizing the interface design under the Chiplet concept, in other words, agreeing on how to build blocks. Servidor serie WIFI
For the areas where Chiplet form products may be the first to be applied, the editor personally thinks that it is high-speed computing, storage, mobile phone processors, network equipment and so on. The RF space may still have to be patient. But on the one hand, for a long time in the future, the Internet of Things, industrial control, instrumentation and other industries will still mainly use RF module products, from LoRa, LoRaWAN and other Sub-G modules to WIFI, Bluetooth, ZigBee, 4G, GPS and other wireless modules are covered.