Intel® SiP Products

Heterogeneous System-in-Package Integration

Heterogeneous system-in-package (SiP) products are highly integrated semiconductors that combine FPGAs with various advanced components, all within a single package. FPGA-based SiP products address next-generation platforms, which are increasingly requiring higher bandwidth, increased flexibility and increased functionality, all while lowering power profiles and footprint requirements.  

An FPGA-based SiP approach provides many system-level advantages compared to conventional integration schemes.

Heterogeneous SiP products are highly integrated semiconductors. At the core of Intel's SiP products is a monolithic FPGA, which provides users the ability to customize and differentiate their end system to meet their system requirements. Additional system-level benefits include:

• Higher Bandwidth: SiP integration using EMIB, enables the highest interconnect density between FPGA and the companion die. This arrangement results in high bandwidth connectivity between the SiP components.
• Lower Power: Companion die (such as memory) are placed as close as possible to the FPGA. The interconnect traces between the FPGA and the companion die are thus very short and do not need as much power to drive them, resulting in lower overall power and optimum performance/watt.
• Smaller Footprint: The ability to heterogeneously integrate components in a single package results in smaller form factors. Customers save valuable board space, reduce board layers, and overall bill of material (BOM) cost.
• Increased Functionality: SiP helps reduce routing complexity at the PCB level because the components are already integrated within the package.
• Mixed Process Nodes: SiP enhances the ability to incorporate different die geometries and silicon technologies. The net result is a highly flexible, scalable solution that is easy to use.
• Faster Time to Market: SiP enables faster time to market by integrating already proven technology and reusing common devices or tiles across product variants. This implementation saves valuable time and resources, thereby accelerating time to market.

Chip-Level Integration Using EMIB

An innovative Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) packaging technology, developed by Intel, enables effective in-package integration of system-critical components such as analog, memory, ASICs, CPU, etc. EMIB offers a simpler manufacturing flow compared to other in-package integration technologies. EMIB eliminates the use of through silicon vias (TSV) and specialized interposer silicon. The result is highly integrated, system-in-package products that offer higher performance, less complexity, and superior signal and power integrity. Additional information about Intel’s EMIB technology can be found on the Intel Custom Foundry website located at http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/emib.html

FPGAs with Near Memory in Package

Intel's near memory solutions integrate high-density DRAM close to the FPGA, within the same package. In this configuration, the in-package memory is accessible significantly faster, up to 10X higher bandwidth when compared to traditional main memory. A near-memory configuration also reduces system power by reducing traces between the FPGA and memory, while also reducing board area.

DRAM system-in-package (SiP) solutions leverage high-bandwidth memory 2 (HBM2) to eliminate memory bandwidth bottlenecks in high-performance systems that are processing an ever-increasing amount of data; including data center, broadcast, wireline networking, and high-performance computing systems.

HBM2 DRAM

HBM2 DRAM is a 3D memory that vertically stacks multiple DRAM die using through silicon via (TSV) technology. Compared to discrete DDR-based solutions, HBM2 DRAM provides higher memory bandwidth, lower system power, and smaller form factor, thereby providing the best bandwidth/watt.

Intel® Stratix® 10 MX devices integrate HBM2 tiles alongside a high-performance monolithic 14 nm FPGA die to offer over 10X higher memory bandwidth relative to discrete DRAM solutions.