OCP Open Chiplet Economy marketplace opens its doors to the world!

Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), a non-profit organization bringing hyperscale innovations to all, has taken the next important step in establishing an Open Chiplet Economy with the opening of the OCP Chiplet Marketplace.

This site will become the one location System in Package (SiP) designers and builders can find the latest available standalone chiplets, design and manufacturing services, chiplet-aware EDA tools, and reference material needed to successfully build chiplet-based products. At its inception the OCP Chiplet Marketplace already has many vendors showcasing their wares, a significant advancement in the Open Chiplet Economy vision set out by the OCP January of 2023.  

Chiplets have rapidly become the efficient and cost-effective way to develop chips at leading-edge nodes and have been used successfully because the entire chip development cycle is managed in house at large companies. To provide an open environment where designers drop known-good third-party sourced chiplets into their designs requires a rethink of the silicon supply chain and the development of an open marketplace.

Steve Helvie, VP Emerging Markets, Open Compute Project Foundation, said: “Moving forward the OCP intends to become the front door to an open chiplet marketplace, making available a catalogue of standalone chiplets, new standardizations, tools and best practices around technical and business workflows that would be required for a truly open economy, where vendors would sell chiplets embodying their IP to integrators that would build specialized System in Package (SiP)s products."

There are significant engineering and business challenges that need to be addressed to fully realize the vision of the Open Chiplet Economy, where Chiplets become mainstream practices employed by most companies. 

Anu Ramamurthy and Jawad Nasrullah, Open Chiplet Economy Project Co-leads at OCP, added: “While incorporating third-party known-good dies into a chip design is not yet straightforward, ongoing efforts at OCP are paving the way for this future. Current near-term challenges being addressed by the OCP Community include developing advanced 3D-IC design kits that streamline chiplet integration with today's EDA tools, establishing standardized form factors to simplify chiplet-based designs, and extending chiplet interconnect standards to serve high-volume markets, including automotive sectors using older nodes. 

"Additionally, the OCP Community is exploring new solutions for Chiplet-based testing and creating specialized Chiplets tailored for HPC and AI applications, bringing us closer to a more accessible and innovative Chiplet ecosystem."

Since its inception, the OCP Open Chiplet Economy Project (formerly ODSA) has played a pivotal role in advancing the use of Chiplets, allowing for greater modularity and flexibility in designing high-performance computing systems. The many cooperating workstreams have successfully brought together a diverse community of contributors, including semiconductor manufacturers, system integrators, and technology providers, all working towards a common goal of creating open specifications and standards for Chiplet-based SiP.

Tom Hackenberg, Principal Analyst, Computing & Software Semiconductor, Memory and Computing Division, Yole Group, stated: “The traditional silicon supply chain will need to adapt to new business and technology workflows to allow chiplets to move from an in-house technology to one that is open and enables third-party standalone chiplet vendors to market their silicon components to SoC builders and packaging firms. This will require standardizations and design automation and test tools that support chiplet-based products. 

"The time is right for the launching of a ‘drop-in’ Chiplet marketplace as the first wave of standardization is complete. The market is starting to form around SiP that targets diverse market segments including automotive, personal data processing, data center, enterprise data processing, communications infrastructure, medical, defense, aerospace and industrial.”