Chiplet

A small die designed to be combined with others in one package, so a large processor is assembled from pieces instead of one slab.

• Manufacturing defects land randomly, so the odds of a flawless die fall sharply with area; several small dies waste far less silicon than one huge one.
• Each piece can use the process that suits it: cutting-edge for compute, older and cheaper for input/output or analog circuits.
• It also escapes the largest area a lithography machine can print in one exposure, about 850 mm², which caps any single chip.
• The cost is communication: signals between dies use more energy and add delay, so dies sit micrometres apart on dense interconnects.