By Ian Ferguson, Senior Director for Infrastructure Products, SiFive

Ian Ferguson

As compute requirements increase, we’re seeing a growing demand for optimized hardware that helps companies innovate faster and more efficiently. In this article, I’ve detailed several ways that this will play out in 2025, from chiplets to open source software, along with other key trends.

• Chiplet deployments beyond data center/server use cases: Chiplets have become a common implementation strategy for high performance server chips. 2025 will be the year we start to see wider adoption of this technology to a broader set of applications, bringing the benefits of modularity, improved ROI and the ability to combine (in the same package) processing technology implemented in advanced process nodes with less aggressive process nodes for proven (previously certified) subsystems and analog functionality. There remains some skepticism about the use of chiplets in applications that demand high levels of safety such as vehicles and avionics; while progress is being made in those areas, it will be other sectors that lead the way. One of the interesting elements to track will be connectivity standards. In the server domain, the needs of connectivity have focused on performance and effective scaling up of processing capabilities. In these new markets, there will be more of a focus on cost and/or power minimization. For SiFive, what this means is exploration as part of a number of research programs around new types of power-efficient and cost-effective interconnects.

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