# Chiplet

> A small chip designed to be combined with others in one package, like a building block.

- Level: Advanced
- Topics: Hardware
- URL: https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/chiplet/
- In Spanish: [Chiplet](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/es/chiplet/)

Traditionally a processor is **monolithic**: one single piece of silicon (a die) holds everything. A **chiplet** design splits that processor into several smaller dies, each doing one job, such as a group of CPU cores, the input/output and memory controllers, or a cache, and mounts them side by side, or stacked, inside the same package. Very short, very dense connections make them work together almost as if they were one chip.

The main reason is yield. Every silicon wafer has a few random defects; on a huge die, one defect can ruin the whole thing, while on small dies it only ruins one little piece. Smaller dies mean more good chips per wafer and lower cost. Chiplets also let designers mix process nodes: the compute cores go on the newest, most expensive node, and the I/O part, which does not benefit much from it, goes on an older, cheaper one. And one set of building blocks can be reused to make a whole product line, from 8 to 96 cores, just by changing how many chiplets go in.

AMD popularized the approach in its Ryzen and EPYC processors, and today it is common: Intel's recent CPUs, Apple's largest M-series chips (two dies joined together) and the big AI accelerators from NVIDIA and AMD, which place GPU dies next to stacks of HBM memory. The hard part moved from the chip to the **advanced packaging** that joins the pieces, an area where TSMC is a key player. The UCIe standard aims to let chiplets from different companies plug into each other.

## An analogy

Building a house from prefabricated modules instead of pouring it as one giant block of concrete. If one module comes out cracked you replace just that module, and you can combine the same modules into small or large houses.

## Keep in mind

- Splits one big chip into several small dies inside one package.
- Small dies waste less silicon to defects, so they are cheaper to make.
- Each part can use the process node that suits it best.
- Depends on advanced packaging, now a bottleneck as important as the chips themselves.

## Go deeper

- [Chiplet on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiplet)
- [Multi-chip module on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-chip_module)

## Related terms

- [CPU](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/cpu/): The chip that runs your programs, one instruction after another, very fast.
- [Cores and threads](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/cpu-cores-and-threads/): Why a CPU is really several processors, and why it can juggle even more tasks.
- [Caching](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/caching/): Keeping a copy of an answer close by so you do not have to work it out again.
- [Chip](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/semiconductor-chip/): A sliver of silicon carrying billions of tiny switches that compute and remember.
- [Process node](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/process-node/): The name of a generation of chip manufacturing, like "3 nm". A label, not a size.
- [AMD](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/amd/): The chip designer that competes with Intel in CPUs and with NVIDIA in GPUs.
- [Intel](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/intel/): The American company behind most PC and server processors for decades.
- [Apple](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/apple/): The company that sells the iPhone and the Mac, plus the services that run on them.