The new technology involves etching a pit of the correct depth and size in the surface of a silicon wafer, then inserting a tiny patterned chip (sometimes called a "
chiplet") into the pit.
Bill Chappell, director of DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office, when introducing the CHIPS program, said, 'By bringing the best design capabilities, reconfigurable circuit fabrics, and accelerators from the commercial domain, we should be able to create defence systems just by adding smaller specialised
chiplets.'
An interesting tidbit in Foveros is the introduction of "
chiplets," which basically is the fragmentation of CPU into its individual parts.
The missile gathers information and returns data packets in 30 to 50 kb
chiplets that are 'high-confident' viewable 3D images.
The base die, compute
chiplets, and DRAM layers are all stacked one on top of the other.
A number of companies have proposed a strategy of
chiplets to achieve the economics of scaling previously achieved with silicon scaling.
It has a base clock of 3.8 GHz and a boost clock of 4.6 GHz and uses two
chiplets to achieve the high core count.
Netronome is collaborating with six silicon companies, Achronix, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Kandou, NXP, Sarcina and SiFive, to develop an open architecture and related specifications for developing
chiplets that promise to reduce silicon development and manufacturing costs.