The Trend: Chiplets, Design Complexity, and Thermal Management
The semiconductor industry is entering a new era. Analysts project that the global market for chiplet-based architectures and heterogeneous integration will exceed US$100 billion by 2030, driven by AI, HPC, and edge applications. Design complexity continues to rise as traditional monolithic SoCs are replaced by modular, multi-die systems interconnected through advanced packaging. New 3D-IC flows are emerging as essential for managing parasitics, mechanical stress, and thermal constraints across stacked dies and multi-reticle systems.
The stakes are high. OEMs, foundries, and OSATs are working to deliver scalable compute and memory architectures that meet the performance-per-watt and time-to-market requirements of next-generation cloud, automotive, and mobile platforms. At the same time, governments and policymakers are advancing strategic roadmaps to strengthen domestic chip supply chains, develop the workforce, and foster long-term semiconductor R&D.
The Market Is Dynamic
Leading tool vendors and semiconductor design houses are investing heavily in electronic design automation platforms optimized for chiplets and system-in-package designs. These platforms bring together early-stage architectural planning, package floor planning, interconnect modeling, and sign-off, enabling “shift-left” strategies across the semiconductor design lifecycle. The latest generation of EDA stacks, including Cadence Integrity, Synopsys PADK flows, and Siemens Cool-3D, is shortening iteration cycles and reducing risk in multi-die tapeouts.
This transformation enables engineering teams to analyze thermal hotspots, mechanical warpage, and signal integrity early in the design process, allowing co-optimization of performance, reliability, and yield. A single 3D-IC module with chiplets sourced from different process nodes and suppliers can now be modeled and verified as a whole before the substrate design is finalized.
At CHIPLETS USA 2026, attendees will explore the latest solutions driving this paradigm shift. From simulation-driven verification to co-design collaboration across the supply chain, exhibitors will demonstrate how advanced packaging is evolving into a scalable, cost-effective, and production-ready reality.
Design Automation Fuels Innovations
Designing with chiplets is not only about partitioning logic across dies; it is about managing thousands of interdependencies between architecture, thermals, signal latency, die stacking, substrate routing, and mechanical integrity. This is where intelligent automation proves critical. AI-assisted design exploration, early parasitic extraction, and cross-domain simulation are now the backbone of chiplet innovation.
Designers must now work closely with foundries, IP providers, OSATs, and materials suppliers to ensure that what is built performs reliably, thermally, and economically. Achieving this requires standards, secure data sharing, and above all, automation platforms that can bridge the gap between silicon and system.
As new use cases emerge, including AI accelerators, chiplets for automotive SoCs, edge AI compute tiles, and memory-on-logic modules, the need for modular design flows and intelligent EDA has never been greater. Experts anticipate that by 2028, more than 65 percent of high-performance chips will be built using chiplets, and that trend is accelerating.
At CHIPLETS USA 2026, companies will present tools, platforms, and methodologies driving the next generation of semiconductor design.
