Today, the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), the nonprofit organization bringing hyperscale innovations to all, and JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry, announce a new collaboration to establish a framework for the transfer of technology captured in an OCP-approved specification to JEDEC for inclusion in one of its standards. This alliance brings together members from both the OCP and JEDEC communities to share efforts in developing and maintaining global standards needed to advance the electronics industry.
Under this new alliance, the current effort will be to provide a mechanism to standardize Chiplet part descriptions leveraging OCP Chiplet Data Extensible Markup Language (CDXML) specification to become part of JEDEC JEP30: Part Model Guidelines for use with today’s EDA tools. With this updated JEDEC standard, expected to be published in 2023, Chiplet builders will be able to provide electronically a standardized Chiplet part description to their customers paving the way for automating System in Package (SiP) design and build using Chiplets. The description will include information needed by SiP builders such as Chiplet thermal properties, physical and mechanical requirements, behavior specifications, power and signal integrity properties, testing the Chiplet in package, and security parameters.
“One of the key efforts at the OCP is centered around the need for specialized computation for AI and ML workloads driving the need for specialized silicon. To deliver on the need for specialized silicon while enabling a rapid pace of innovation, we believe a new open Chiplet economy with a low barrier to entry is needed and will require collaboration and standardizations on multiple dimensions, ensuring that companies are able to interact in an open efficient and scalable manner. The OCP has been investing in being a catalyst for an open Chiplet economy for several years through its Open Domain Specific Architecture (ODSA) Project and are pleased to establish this alliance with JEDEC to allow work done in ODSA to become part of a global international standard that advances the industry,” said Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., VP Market Intelligence & innovation at the Open Compute Project Foundation.
There are many opportunities to create additional standardization efforts bringing together JEDEC’s strength in setting global standards for the microelectronics industry with OCP’s expertise in specifying system level devices seeding emerging technologies and markets, to set new global standards for novel device components in emerging markets eliminating market fragmentation and wasteful duplication of efforts by market participants.
“JEDEC is delighted to collaborate with the OCP to support our common goal to provide standards that serve the industry and move the market forward,” said John Kelly, President, JEDEC. “JEDEC and the OCP are united in our belief that standards developed in an open community and industry collaboration are essential to help foster efficient markets”.
“The silicon supply chain is diverse. It has to serve many vertical electronic equipment segments including Automotive, Personal Data Processing, Data Center and Enterprise Data Processing, Communications and Infrastructure, Medical, Defense, Aerospace and Industrial. Each market includes different value and application-specific requirements that need to be served. Processor suppliers have turned to highly heterogeneous chip platforms to remain competitive. This approach is becoming increasingly complex and costly to manufacture. In response to these challenges, chip builders have begun to adopt the use of chiplets. However, the same diversity that created the demand for chiplets, also makes it unlikely that any one supplier has the broad expertise to serve all these markets. Thus, many different Chiplet supply chains will emerge and no one solution will serve all markets. The emerging market around Chiplets will need many players and a low barrier to entry allowing for rapid innovation. Open communities sharing the effort for building common tools, prototypes, business workflows and standardizations are critical to accelerate a Chiplet Economy,” said Tom Hackenberg, Principal Analyst, Computing & Software Semiconductor, Memory and Computing Division, Yole Group
