imagine you could build a CPU in much the same way that we build pcs today
with parts from different manufacturers this might actually become a reality in
the near future thanks to a new standard called ucie that's being pushed by a lot
of major players in the tech industry uci stands for universal chiplet
interconnect express and it sounds a bit like pci express right funnily enough
it's conceptually similar instead of adding to your computer's functionality
with cards that fit into slots ucie builds on a chips functionality with
additional chip lits as an example ucie
might allow for a system on ship that has an Intel CPU graphics from AMD and a
wi-fi radio from qualcomm a security enclave from microsoft and an ai
accelerator from google we did see something like this in 2018 when Intel
came out with those kaby lake g processors that featured AMD graphics
but ucie takes this concept further and also standardizes it that's the
important part but hold on systems on a chip are already a thing so what's the
point of this modular approach well most current socs are designed as a
single monolithic chip which presents some manufacturing disadvantages you see
transistors have gotten much smaller which makes our chips perform better and
consume less power but as we start hitting the limits of
how small we can make them the obvious way to continue improving performance is
to make the chips bigger but doing this raises the chances of a manufacturing
defect one little tiny defect that will render the entire thing useless so
instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water the industry is moving
towards smaller chiplets that can be combined after they're manufactured
moreover ucie enables chiplets from different companies to be combined
another key difference from how chiplets are usually put together you can even
combine different chiplets that use different process nodes onto the same
package believe it or not wireless chips for things like wi-fi and 5g actually
perform better with larger transistors because there isn't as much signal
leakage so you could combine a modem built on a larger node with a processor
built on a smaller one this opens the floodgates for companies to make
different kinds of specialized chips a relatively low cost without having to
design them from scratch meaning it could be easier and cheaper in the end
to get a phone with better ai for photo editing and voice transcription for
example instead of like we have right now where we are relying on the apples
of the world to make one chip to rule them all but how exactly does ucie help
chips from different companies talk to each other how does the standard work
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right let's talk about how these chiplets would communicate you know how
we compared ucie to PCIe earlier in the video ucie can actually use pci express
to move data between chiplets much the same way an NVIDIA graphics card can
talk with an Intel CPU ucie can also use another protocol
called compute express link or cxl which
is basically a higher performance PCIe variant for data centers but because
ucie is designed primarily for chiplets that sit right next to each other it's
much lower latency than a typical pci express implementation and it can also
move plenty of data we're talking 1.3
terabytes per second through one millimeter of chip edge
that quick communication means that ucie chips could combine features that would
otherwise need to be on separate chips or even separate cards while using a lot
less power but it's not quite the same thing as AMD's infinity fabric or
apple's ultra fusion used in the m1 ultra as directly connecting CPU cores
like those do requires more complex designs and keep in mind that ucie is a
very new standard so don't expect to see tons of pcs and phones and servers that
could be rocking it immediately but it could end up being quite a big
deal down the line as industry heavy hitters like Intel AMD ARM google
microsoft meta samsung qualcomm and tsmc
have all thrown their weight behind the standard and keep an eye on apple and
NVIDIA apple has moved toward designing their own ARM-based silicone in-house
while NVIDIA continues to favor monolithic chips but maybe we'll see
them jump on the uci train in the future if it does end up becoming a ubiquitous
industry standard in the meantime i think i'll design my
own phone chip with two 5g modems so then it'll be 10g
that's how it works 25g
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