Alchip moves from TSMC 7nm to 5nm!

While Alchip is speeding its way down the TSMC process technology roadmap I am reminded how important services are to the semiconductor ecosystem. We can thank ASIC companies like Alchip for the heavy investment systems companies have made into semiconductors. We covered this in our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” in Chapter 2 The ASIC Business. Today, system companies account for more than half of the spending inside the semiconductor ecosystem so let’s give a round of applause to the ASIC market segment, absolutely.

It has been a very busy month. Last week Alchip announced 5nm capability and next week Alchip will be presenting at the TSMC symposium: “Reticle Size Design and Chiplet Capabilities”. The presentation will cover the all important:

• N12 Machine Learning Chip Design Achievements
• Large SoC Design and MCM Chiplet Challenges
• Alchip’s Large SoC and MCM Chiplet Solutions

And here is the 5nm announcement from last week which includes packaging from TSMC. TSMC certainly loves Alchip:

ALCHIP TECHNOLOGIES OPENS 5NM ASIC DESIGN CAPABILITIES

First Dedicated ASIC company to accept 5nm projects

Milpitas, CA. August 13, 2020 – Alchip Technologies to became the first dedicated ASIC company to announce 5nm commercial design readiness and that is accepting 5nm design. First test-chip tape-outs are expected in December.

Alchip’s complete 5nm design-to-delivery methodology focuses on minimizing design turnaround time. Physical design attributes include a chiplet technology platform, high performance computing IP portfolio, IP sub-system integration services and the latest 2.5D heterogeneous packaging capabilities.

The company expects that 5nm demand will come initially from high-performance cloud computing applications. Still, Alchip expects that 5nm devices will be 52% smaller, 3% faster, yet use only 36% of the power, compared to current 7nm devices.

Alchip 5nm designs will draw upon a high-performance computing IP portfolio that includes “best in class” DDR5, GDDR6, HBM2E, HBM3, D2D, PCIe5, 112G serdes IP from Tier 1 providers. Alchip in-house IP sub-system integration services cover PCIe5, DDR5, HBM2E/3, and 112G PAM4 serdes.

Critical to 5nm production is an innovative advanced packaging capability that is for MCM, CoWoS and InFO_os. Package design covers SIPI/thermal simulation that provides plug-and-play post silicon solutions to reduce substrate layers and the resulting cost. The result is very elegant 5nm devices with more accurate power and thermal estimation flows for high power designs that have avoided post-silicon surprises.

“We’re rolling out our 5nm capabilities now to meet hyper-scalers’ demand that is being driven by the work-from-home, online-everything and business continuity surge trends that are driving significant data traffic and demand-pull for compute workloads,” said Johnny Shen, Alchip President and CEO. “We’ve made a commitment to the market that we would meet the demands of advanced technology head-on and today’s 5nm announcement substantiates that commitment.”

About Alchip
Alchip Technologies Ltd., headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, is a leading global provider of silicon design and production services for system companies developing complex and high-volume ASICs and SoCs. The company was founded by semiconductor veterans from Silicon Valley and Japan in 2003 and provides faster time-to-market and cost-effective solutions for SoC design at mainstream and advanced, including 7nm processes. Customers include global leaders in AI, HPC/supercomputer, mobile phones, entertainment device, networking equipment and other electronic product categories. Alchip is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE: 3661) and is a TSMC-certified Value Chain Aggregator.

For more information, please visit our website: http://www.alchip.com

Also Read:

Alchip Delivers Cutting Edge Design Support for Supercomputer Processor

CEO Interview: Johnny Shen of Alchip

Alchip Reveals How to Extend Moore’s Law at TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum