AMD / EPYC Chiplet-Based Server Processor
2021 Edition. In Device Technology of the Year
For EPYC, AMD partitioned the design to put the CPU functions that would benefit most from the next node (7nm) while leaving analog and I/O blocks for a less advanced technology. It all makes perfect sense. The analog circuits simply do not benefit from scaling transistors or interconnect pitches. It is even more striking to consider the I/O themselves with bump pitches for getting signals off chip scaling very slowly compared to the digital circuits. AMD calculated an additional 10% of silicon real estate required for the die-to-die communication blocks, redundant logic and other unnamed add-ons to enable the chiplet design compared to a hypothetical monolithic EPYC chip. The total die cost of the multiple chiplets saved 41% compared to AMD internal estimates for the monolithic processor.