Automotive industry comes together to discuss chiplets

During the event, imec announced that several leading companies, including Arm, ASE, BMW Group, Bosch, Cadence Design Systems, Siemens, SiliconAuto, Synopsys, Tenstorrent, and Valeo, have committed to joining its Automotive Chiplet Programme (ACP). This initiative unites stakeholders across the automotive industry in a unique pre-competitive research collaboration.

The programme aims to assess which chiplet architectures and packaging technologies are best suited to meet the specific high-performance computing and safety requirements of automotive manufacturers, while extending the benefits of chiplet technology—such as flexibility, enhanced performance, and cost efficiency—across the entire industry.

The integration of chip technology in vehicles dates back to the late 1970s. However, traditional chip architectures are now struggling to keep up with the increasing demands of modern automotive systems, such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) services. Chiplets, modular chips designed to perform specialised functions, offer a promising solution. These chiplets can be seamlessly combined to create more complex computing systems.

“The adoption of chiplet technology would signal a disruptive shift in central vehicle computer design, offering distinct advantages over traditional monolithic approaches. Chiplets facilitate rapid customization and upgrades, while reducing development time and costs,” explained Bart Placklé, Vice President of automotive technologies at imec. “However, moving to a chiplet architecture is prohibitively expensive for OEMs if done in isolation. Commercial viability thus hinges on industry alignment around a set of chiplet standards, enabling car manufacturers to procure chiplets from the market and integrate them with proprietary chiplets to build unique offerings.”

The programme seeks to develop a chiplet architecture that combines performance, energy efficiency, durability, cost-effectiveness, and customisation. While sectors such as supercomputing, data centres, and smartphones have long embraced chiplet technology, the automotive industry has been more cautious due to its unique challenges.

Automotive solutions must meet stringent reliability and robustness standards to ensure continuous operation and passenger safety over a car’s lifespan, typically ten to fifteen years. Cost efficiency is also a critical consideration, alongside high performance and energy efficiency to preserve battery life. These are the key challenges that imec’s Automotive Chiplet Programme aims to address.

A collaborative research effort unparalleled in the automotive industry

imec’s Automotive Chiplet Programme draws on imec’s renowned expertise in advanced 2.5D and 3D packaging, combined with resources from various parts of the automotive supply chain.

“The agility of chiplets will allow the automotive ecosystem to respond quickly to changing market demands and technological breakthroughs. They also facilitate flexible component integration, limiting the risk of vendor lock-in and improving supply chain resilience. In addition, their optimized performance leads to lower power requirements, enabling compact device design," added Placklé.

"We believe all stakeholders will benefit from the pre-competitive, collaborative approach of this programme, which leverages collective expertise to make swift progress. The insights gained can be further applied to research, development, and product innovation, accelerating each partner’s long-term roadmap. This collaborative methodology reflects the successful practices established in the semiconductor industry over the past 40 years. With decades of experience in designing and optimising chip architectures and technologies, imec is ideally positioned to guide the automotive industry towards a groundbreaking new chiplet architecture tailored to its specific needs," Placklé concluded.