Tech war: China experts at odds over role of ‘chiplets’ in helping achieve goal of semiconductor self-sufficiency
- Chiplets, pre-developed silicon dies that can be packaged into a more complex processor, have gained popularity because they reduce design costs
- HiSilicon, the in-house chip design unit of telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co, is one of the first companies in China to research chiplets
Chinese semiconductor experts are debating the viability of “chiplet” technology as a shortcut to achieving chip self-sufficiency, an issue that could have far-reaching implications for the country’s hi-tech supply chain and integrated circuit (IC) development.
Chiplets, pre-developed silicon dies that can be packaged into a more complex processor, have gained popularity because they reduce design costs and may even offer a solution to extending Moore’s Law, which refers to the doubling in the number of transistors on an IC every two years.
For China, chiplet technology is particularly appealing because it opens up the possibility of incorporating a series of 14-nanometre node chips – which the country can produce – with other chips it cannot produce, to create a more powerful semiconductor that is equivalent to an advanced 7nm or even 3nm node chip, which could help reduce the impact of US trade sanctions.
HiSilicon, the in-house chip design unit of telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co, is one of the first companies in China to research chiplets, while Shanghai-listed semiconductor intellectual property firm VeriSilicon Holdings is also pursuing the technology, which has been described by some analysts as the Lego approach to making microprocessors.
VeriSilicon CEO Wayne Dai told an online conference last week that chiplet technology would enable China to build up a “strategic stock” of advanced central processing units (CPUs) and graphic processing units (GPUs), the core chips used in computers and electronics devices.
“Chiplet has significant meaning to China for solving choke points [in the supply chain],” Dai said, referring to the country’s need to import advanced chips like CPUs and GPUs.
Dai said the technology provided an opportunity for China to hoard chiplets that might be in a technology area sanctioned by the US, so that they can be used at a later stage to produce more powerful processors when needed.
Dai said the technology provided an opportunity for China to hoard chiplets that can be used at a later stage to produce more powerful processors when needed. Although China is lagging the West when it comes to wafer fabrication of semiconductors, it has a well-established infrastructure for chip packaging and assembly, the process of assembling chiplet modules into a larger package.