Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1526407
42 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2024 seamless integration from layout to analysis and signoff. What are the most important things that PCB designers need to understand about silicon and packages? e current trend, driven by size limitations and cost, is to disaggregate huge mono- lithic ICs into smaller build- ing blocks called chiplets. is shis much of the com- plexity from IC design to package design. At the same time, the IC foundries have entered the advanced packaging space with technologies that facilitate higher interconnect density and smaller pin pitches. e industry calls this "multi-chiplet heterogeneous inte- gration" because the individual chiplets can be built from multiple nodes and technologies. As a result, more emphasis is put on multi-chiplet packaging as the platform to create product differentiation. There's a lot going on at the packaging level as sili- con continues to shrink and Moore's law runs out. How will this affect PCB design- ers and design engineers? As the trend of multi-chiplet heterogeneous integration accelerates, PCB designers become the obvious choice for who is best suited to tran- sition into package substrate designers. is is because multi-chiplet packages have a lot in common with PCB layouts. For example, each chiplet will communicate with other chiplets using a standard communication interface like UCIe. is is similar to how board-level devices work with standard interfaces, such as PCIe and DDR4. In other words, device-to- device communication is not so much a timing challenge, like on digital ICs, but rather a signal integrity issue to ensure the chiplet-to-chiplet interface spec has been met. Figure 2: Technology breakthroughs in semiconductor packaging are key to transforming chips into heterogeneously integrated 3D systems. John Park