eetimes.com, Jun. 20, 2025 –
The semiconductor industry stands at a crossroads. As we witness the explosive growth of artificial intelligence and the increasing complexity of computing demands, chiplet technology has emerged as a critical enabler of next-generation innovation. But for this technology to truly succeed, we must understand its economic foundations—the delicate balance between value creation and cost management that will determine whether chiplets become the industry standard or remain a niche solution.
The economic viability of any technology hinges on a simple equation: The unique value it creates must justify the costs required to make it succeed. For chiplet technology, this equation is particularly complex, involving an entire ecosystem of players from design to manufacturing and deployment.
I believe the chiplet economy rests on three fundamental pillars—deployment, innovation, and manufacturing, each presenting distinct opportunities and challenges.
The first pillar is commercial deployment—the widespread adoption of chiplet-based products across multiple use cases. Without broad deployment, there can be no economies of scale, and without scale, costs remain prohibitively high while value creation remains limited.
Today, we’re seeing promising signs. High-performance computing and AI products, particularly those destined for data centers, represent the primary market for chiplet technology. This makes sense. Data centers demand the kind of performance and power efficiency that chiplets enable, and they can amortize the premium costs associated with cutting-edge technology by using chiplets on advanced nodes only when and where they are needed...