eFPGA Enabled Chiplets!

With our continuing chiplet coverage I found this of great interest. I have always felt that eFPGAs and chiplets are a natural fit for the next generation of chip design and this is an excellent example. As we design with chiplets one of the challenges is verification/validation in regards to performance and interoperability. This partnership between Achronix Semiconductor and applied research institute Fraunhofer is a great example of how to address these challenges.

We have been working with Achronix Semiconductor since 2017 and know them well. Achronix stands out as they are the only independent high-end FPGA provider now that Altera and Xilinx have been acquired. This allows them to be much more customer centric. Achronix is also the only big FPGA company that provides eFPGA IP technology.

Fraunhofer is an interesting organization. I see them at conferences but have never worked with them directly. Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, founded in 1949, is based in Germany and is the world’s leading applied research organization. Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft currently operates 76 institutes and research units throughout Germany. Over 30,000 employees, predominantly scientists and engineers, work with an annual research budget of €2.9 billion.

Here is the original announcement released last month with the associated links for more information. Definitely worth a read:

Fraunhofer IIS/EAS Selects Achronix Embedded FPGAs (eFPGAs) to Build Heterogeneous Chiplet Demonstrator 

Collaboration to create an eFPGA-enabled chiplet solution aimed at validating next-generation chip-to-chip interconnect technology.

Santa Clara, Calif., and Dresden, Germany, April 25, 2023 – In a continuing commitment to enabling industry-leading solutions for the semiconductor market, Fraunhofer IIS/EAS, leading-edge applied research institute in the field of advanced package solution design, and Achronix Semiconductor Corporation, the industry’s only independent supplier of high-end FPGAs and eFPGA IP solutions, are entering today in a partnership to build a heterogeneous chiplet solution to validate performance and interoperability in advanced high-performance system solutions.

The Fraunhofer institute provides system concepts, design services and fast prototyping in most advanced packaging technologies and will make use of Speedcore™ eFPGA IP from Achronix in its next project. The multi-chip system solution will be composed of several chiplets that will be used to explore chip-to-chip transaction layer interconnects such as Bunch of Wires (BoW) and Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe).

Chiplets are rapidly being adopted for high-performance, heterogeneous multi-chip solutions and enable lower latency, higher bandwidth and lower cost than discrete devices connected via traditional interconnects on a printed circuit board. One key application that will be covered in this project is the connection of high-speed ADCs together with Achronix® eFPGA IP for preprocessing in radars as well as wireless and optical communication. Achronix Speedcore eFPGA IP is playing an important role in this application with low latency and reconfigurability while delivering high-performance data acceleration required in many applications.

The result of this project will create a demonstration platform suitable for applications such as 5G/6G wireless infrastructure, ADAS and high-performance test and measurement equipment. The findings of this cooperation will be communicated in a later press release and will be of interest to all semiconductor market actors seeking interface compatibility with their semiconductor chiplets.

About Fraunhofer IIS/EAS

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS is a world leader in research on microelectronic and IT system solutions and services. Scientists at the institute’s EAS division in Dresden are working on key technologies for cutting-edge electronics systems. Among other things, the researchers focus on new design concepts to meet the challenge of the constant miniaturization of semiconductor components and the growing complexity of integrated circuits. The goal is to ensure the swift, resource-efficient, error-free, safe and secure development of electronic systems. Another focus is on new “More than Moore” technologies, which make it possible to combine a wide variety of assemblies in a single component.

About Achronix Semiconductor Corporation

Achronix Semiconductor Corporation is a fabless semiconductor corporation based in Santa Clara, California, offering high-end FPGA-based data acceleration solutions, designed to address high-performance, compute-intensive and real-time processing applications. Achronix is the only supplier to have both high-performance and high-density standalone FPGAs and licensed eFPGA IP solutions. Achronix Speedster®7t FPGA and Speedcore™ eFPGA IP offerings are further enhanced by ready-to-use VectorPath™ accelerator cards targeting AI, machine learning, networking and data center applications. All Achronix products are fully supported by the Achronix Tool Suite which enables customers to quickly develop their own custom applications.

Achronix has a global footprint, with sales and design teams across the U.S., Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit www.achronix.com.

Follow Achronix

Website: www.achronix.com
The Achronix Blog: /blogs/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Achronixcorp
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/57668/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/AchronixCorp

Contacts

Sandra Kundel
Press Relations
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, Division Engineering of Adaptive Systems EAS
Muenchner Strasse 16, 01187 Dresden, Germany
Phone +49 351 45691-152
pr@eas.iis.fraunhofer.de

Bob Siller
Achronix Semiconductor Corporation
408-889-4142
bobsiller@achronix.com

Also Read:

The Rise of the Chiplet

Achronix on Platform Selection for AI at the Edge

WEBINAR: FPGAs for Real-Time Machine Learning Inference