Nidish Gaur

A journey into the benefits, trade-offs and technical implications of moving to chiplets Monolithic integration has been the dominant paradigm since the rise of VLSI-based ASICs in the 1970s–1980s. In a monolithic design, all functional blocks of integrated circuits such as logic, memory, analog interfaces, and specialized accelerators, are integrated onto a single piece of silicon. This model offers a compact, tightly coupled architecture with well-established design and verification flows.

The first step is to assess technically feasibility of partitioning. Functional blocks that require tight timing or high bandwidth between them are often difficult to separate without introducing unacceptable latency. In contrast, blocks with limited interaction, such as analog versus digital logic or standalone accelerators, are generally better suited for chiplet partitioning. Another important factor is process node optimization.