July 05, 2020

Discussing Chiplets with Ming Zhang

1 hour 2 minutes

Welcome Dr Ming Zhang, CEO and founder of zGlue!

What is zGlue? It's a company that helps engineers integrate Chiplets into a single package, AKA heterogenous chip integration.

ASIC are monolithic and require much higher capital investment and testing.

The key advantage of zGlue is miniturization

zGlue has an reference chip they publish called the Omnichip. It has Bluetooth, temp sensor, memory, and other sensors, 7 Chiplets in total.

The output package is an LGA that is 8 mm x 6 mm.

The system complexity needs to be high enough for it to matter: it's unlikely engineers will need this service to put together 2 simple chips.

It means working outside the PCB workflow, which will be an adjustment. The new workflow is entirely within the ChipBuilder environment though.

The Chiplets a placed onto a "Smart Fabric", which is a programmable interconnect with some small functions built in.

There is also "common denominator IP", like LED drivers and security elements

The example Omnichip targets IoT products

Good candidates for zGlue are constrained system by design, which means they probably fit into a theme like "IoT" and the associated included elements in the smart fabric.

zGlue also support custom smart fabric, but there will be added cost, time for getting it made/tested.

This "bigger LEGO board" is different than what Adrian Tang talked about, making custom systems for each design.

How does smart fabric handle power/analog/RF? RF on the top metal, the analog and power are different "taps". The more digital a signal, the deeper it goes into the fabric. The metal requires customization in the mask.

There are "Templates", which should help people get started, as well as an "Open Chiplet template", which was released 2 weeks ago with Google.

physics decisions based on design rules

Go shopping on zGlue on their "Chiplet Store"

Templates are top down

There is no licensing agreement required for each chip, because it's like buying the chip off the shelf (sans the polymide package). Almost all Chiplets are off the shelf parts.

Example templates:

Edge node AI (detect gestures and voice)

Medical

Industrial

Wearables

Smart Graziery

For pricing, there is a unit cost and development cost. The best way to get started is the "Shuttle program", which is $25K for 10 components (and includes development cost).

Once you get to production, there are options for consignment or non-consignment

Development takes about 1 to 3 months.

You can buy some of their "off the shelf" components for even less, such as the GEM1, GEM2, or Omnichip design.

They use TSMC for silicon fab and ASE for assembly.

At the assembly facility, the Chiplets come on tape and reel and are placed in a similar manner to other components.

Who does Ming say they're targeting? "Hardware innovators", namely people that are trying to go impossibly small or impossibly fast.

For the brave, you can communicate directly with the smart fabric during debug.

Ming thinks all things will converge and many designs will go towards this path in the future.

zGlue was conceived to stack things and they will start going from 2D to 3D designs in the future.

For more information, check out the specific links above or check out zglue.com.

They will be exhibiting at DAC/SemiCon West (July 20-24) with a "Virtual Booth". The link for that is not yet active, but you can register for the event

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By The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

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