Chiplet-Based Heterogeneous Integration: Design Challenges

Abstract

As Moore’s Law plateaus, chiplet-based heterogeneous integration emerges as a compelling alternative for sustaining performance, yield, and cost efficiency. This design paradigm assembles complex systems by integrating smaller, specialized dies—chiplets—within a single package. While it offers benefits such as improved yield, flexible customization, and design modularity, it introduces substantial design challenges spanning interconnect, standardization, manufacturing, thermal management, and security. This paper delves into the landscape of heterogeneous integration and chiplet architectures, highlighting their advantages alongside the critical design challenges. We discuss interconnect demands—like achieving sub-nanosecond latency and terabit-per-second bandwidth—as benchmarks for performance parity with monolithic designs ResearchGate. The lack of industry-wide interface standards complicates cross-vendor interoperability ELE TimesDrivetech PartnersWikipedia. Furthermore, verifying known-good dies (KGD), testing fine-pitch interconnects, and ensuring die reliability introduce costly manufacturing complexities ResearchGatecei.se. Thermal and mechanical stresses—especially in 2.5D/3D configurations—pose significant reliability and design tool challenges ResearchGateSemiconductor Engineering. Managing power delivery, hot spot mitigation, and immersion or advanced cooling become essential in dense packages Patsnap EurekaSEMI. Moreover, EDA tools, simulation models, and verification flows remain geared toward monolithic ICs, impeding design productivity and time-to-market for chiplet systems MDPIKnowledge Sourcing Intelligence LLP. This review synthesizes these challenges and outlines a structured methodology—spanning architectural modeling, interconnect design, cooling strategies, and testing frameworks—for addressing chiplet integration challenges. Finally, we chart future directions in standardization, tooling evolution, and cross-industry collaboration required to mature the chiplet ecosystem.