The Inevitable Disaggregation: Validating the Dominance of Multi-Die Architectures in High-Performance Computing by 2025

I. Executive Summary: The End of the Monolithic Era

The prediction that at least half of new High-Performance Computing (HPC) chip designs will utilize 2.5D or 3D multi-die architectures by 2025 is not only valid but represents a conservative estimate of a fundamental, irreversible industry transition.1 This shift is a direct and necessary response to the compounding economic and physical limitations of traditional monolithic scaling, a paradigm famously encapsulated by Moore’s Law. The semiconductor industry is now being aggressively accelerated toward this new architectural model by the insatiable computational demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and large-scale data analytics.2

This report will demonstrate that the transition away from single-die, monolithic System-on-Chip (SoC) designs is driven by a confluence of non-negotiable factors. These include the prohibitive cost and diminishing performance-per-dollar returns of advanced process nodes, the hard physical limits on maximum die size imposed by photolithography equipment, and the strategic necessity of heterogeneous integration to optimize performance, power, and area (PPA) for complex systems. By disaggregating large SoCs into smaller, specialized dies known as “chiplets,” designers can mix and match components fabricated on the most appropriate and cost-effective manufacturing processes, a feat impossible within a monolithic framework.

bundle-combo—sql-programming-with-microsoft-sql-server-and-mysql By Uplatz

The feasibility of this architectural revolution rests on two pillars that have now reached maturity. The first is the development of sophisticated advanced packaging platforms from the world’s leading foundries, such as TSMC’s Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) ecosystem and Intel’s Foveros 3D stacking and Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) technologies.7 These platforms provide the high-density, high-bandwidth interconnects required to reassemble disparate chiplets into a single, cohesive System-in-Package (SiP). The second is the emergence of critical industry standards, most notably the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe), which promises to break down proprietary walls and create a multi-vendor, interoperable chiplet ecosystem.1

Market forecasts provide commercial validation for this technological pivot, projecting explosive growth in the advanced packaging and chiplet sectors. The data center, HPC, and AI segments are serving as the primary commercial engines, with the total semiconductor market for data centers alone projected to grow from $209 billion in 2024 to nearly $500 billion by 2030.10 The architectural roadmaps of industry leaders—AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA—already confirm a complete and strategic pivot to multi-die designs for their flagship HPC products, providing incontrovertible evidence of this trend in action.11

The 2025 inflection point is the culmination of these converging forces. The era of designing HPC processors as single, monolithic pieces of silicon is effectively over, replaced by a new paradigm of creating complex Systems-in-Package from smaller, specialized, and increasingly interoperable building blocks. This report substantiates this conclusion with detailed technical analysis, market data, and in-depth case studies of the products defining the future of high-performance computing.

II. The Architectural Shift: From Single-Die SoCs to Heterogeneous Systems-in-Package

The transition to multi-die architectures represents the most significant change in semiconductor design methodology in decades. It is a move away from brute-force scaling on a single die toward intelligent, system-level integration within a package. Understanding the foundational concepts of 2.5D and 3D integration, the chiplet paradigm, and the enabling interconnect technologies is essential to grasping the magnitude of this shift.

2.1 Deconstructing the Terminology: 2D, 2.5D, and 3D Integration

The evolution from traditional chip design to advanced packaging is best understood as a progression in how multiple semiconductor dies are integrated, utilizing the third dimension—height—to achieve greater performance and density.

2D (Monolithic System-on-Chip – SoC): This is the traditional and most familiar approach, where all functional components of a system—such as CPU cores, GPU cores, memory controllers, and I/O interfaces—are fabricated and integrated onto a single, contiguous piece of silicon.14 This monolithic model has been the bedrock of the semiconductor industry for over 50 years, driven by the scaling principles of Moore’s Law. However, as detailed later in this report, this approach is now facing insurmountable economic and physical barriers, necessitating the move to more complex integration schemes.
2.5D (Interposer-Based): This architecture is an advanced packaging technique that represents a crucial intermediate step between 2D and true 3D integration. In a 2.5D design, multiple bare dies (chiplets) are placed side-by-side on an intermediate substrate, known as an interposer, all within a single package.14 This interposer contains extremely fine-pitch wiring to facilitate high-bandwidth, low-latency communication between the chiplets. The entire assembly is then mounted onto a standard package substrate. The term “2.5D” was coined because it leverages some of the advantages of vertical integration (like short, dense interconnects) without stacking the active logic dies directly on top of one another.14 This was the first practical and commercially successful method for integrating High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) stacks adjacent to a central processor, a common configuration in modern AI accelerators.
3D (Vertical Stacking): This is the ultimate form of vertical integration, where multiple integrated circuits or wafers are stacked directly on top of each other and interconnected using vertical electrical conduits.16 These connections are typically made using Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs)—vertical copper pillars that pass through the silicon die—or through direct copper-to-copper (Cu-Cu) hybrid bonding.16 This approach offers the highest possible interconnect density, the lowest interconnect power consumption, the shortest communication latency, and the smallest physical footprint.16 However, it also presents the most significant engineering challenges, particularly in thermal management, design complexity, and manufacturing yield.15

It is crucial to recognize that this progression is not a linear replacement but rather the development of a more sophisticated design toolkit. Leading companies are not abandoning 2.5D in favor of 3D; instead, they are developing both concurrently. This is because these architectures represent different points on a complex cost-performance curve. A cost-sensitive mobile application might use a simpler 2.5D approach with an organic interposer, while a state-of-the-art AI accelerator will leverage a full silicon interposer to connect multiple logic dies to HBM stacks.2 True 3D stacking is often reserved for applications where footprint and latency are the absolute highest priorities, such as stacking cache memory directly on top of a processor core.11 The “shift” is therefore not to a single new architecture but to a design philosophy where architects select the most appropriate integration scheme from a menu of 2.5D and 3D options based on specific product requirements.

2.2 The Rise of the Chiplet: A Paradigm for Yield, Cost, and Flexibility

The chiplet is the fundamental building block of the multi-die revolution. A chiplet is a small, specialized die containing a specific functional block that would have previously been a part of a larger, monolithic SoC.4 By “disaggregating” the SoC into these modular components, designers unlock profound advantages in manufacturing, cost, and design flexibility.22

Yield and Cost Optimization: Semiconductor manufacturing yield is inversely and exponentially related to die size. The larger the die, the higher the probability that a random defect on the wafer will render the entire chip non-functional.4 In a monolithic design, a single critical flaw can force the disposal of a large, complex, and expensive piece of silicon. With a chiplet-based design, the system is composed of multiple smaller dies. The probability of a defect occurring on any single small die is much lower. If a defect does occur, only that small, relatively inexpensive chiplet is discarded, dramatically improving the overall effective yield of functional components from each wafer and lowering the total system cost.4
Heterogeneous Integration: This is arguably the most powerful strategic advantage of the chiplet model. It allows designers to “mix-and-match” dies fabricated using different process technologies, each optimized for its specific function.5 For example, the high-performance CPU or GPU cores that benefit most from the speed and power efficiency of a cutting-edge 3nm process can be designed as one set of chiplets. Simultaneously, the analog I/O controllers, which do not gain significant benefits from advanced nodes and can be manufactured more reliably and cheaply, can be designed as a separate chiplet on a mature 14nm or 28nm process.4 This approach allows for the optimization of PPA for the entire system, a feat that is economically and technically impractical with a monolithic die where all components must share the same, expensive process node.24
Bypassing Reticle Limits: The photolithography equipment used in chip manufacturing has a maximum physical size for a single exposure, known as the “reticle limit,” which is currently around 850 mm2.4 This sets a hard ceiling on the size, and thus the complexity, of a monolithic chip. Chiplets provide a direct path to circumvent this barrier. Designers can create systems far larger than the reticle limit by connecting multiple reticle-sized dies together within a single package.4 This is precisely the strategy employed by NVIDIA for its Blackwell B200 GPU, which stitches two massive dies together to create a single logical accelerator with 208 billion transistors.13

2.3 The Role of the Interposer and Bridge Technologies

The interposer is the critical enabling component for 2.5D architectures, acting as a high-density, passive “mini-circuit board” that sits between the active chiplets and the main package substrate.14 Its purpose is to provide the vast number of short, fine-pitch connections needed for high-bandwidth communication.

Silicon Interposers: This is the highest-performance and most common option for HPC applications. Fabricated using standard silicon manufacturing processes, these interposers can feature extremely dense Redistribution Layers (RDLs) for horizontal wiring and use TSVs for vertical connections to the package substrate below. This is the foundational technology behind TSMC’s CoWoS platform.7
Organic and Glass Interposers: These are emerging as lower-cost alternatives to silicon. Organic interposers cannot achieve the same interconnect density as silicon but offer significant cost savings.14 Glass interposers provide excellent electrical properties and dimensional stability but are supported by a less mature manufacturing ecosystem.14
Bridge Technologies: This is an innovative compromise between the high cost of a full silicon interposer and the limited density of a purely organic substrate. Pioneered by Intel with its Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) technology, this approach embeds small, localized silicon “bridges” only in the areas of an organic substrate where ultra-high-density connections are required between adjacent dies.8 This provides the performance benefits of silicon interconnects precisely where they are needed, without incurring the cost and complexity of a full-reticle-sized silicon interposer, offering an optimized balance of cost and performance.

Table 1: Comparison of Multi-Die Integration Architectures
Architecture	Key Characteristics	Interconnect Method	Relative Bandwidth Density	Relative Power Efficiency	Relative Cost Profile	Key Use Cases	Example Technologies
2D Monolithic	All components on a single die.	On-die wires	Baseline	Baseline	High (for large, advanced-node dies)	Traditional CPUs, SoCs	Standard CMOS
2.5D Silicon Interposer	Chiplets side-by-side on a silicon substrate.	Micro-bumps, RDLs, TSVs	High	High	Very High	HPC, AI Accelerators, HBM Integration	TSMC CoWoS-S 7
2.5D Bridge	Chiplets on an organic substrate with localized silicon bridges.	Silicon Bridge, RDLs	High (at bridge)	High	Moderate-High	Data Center CPUs, FPGAs	Intel EMIB 8
3D Stacking	Chiplets stacked vertically.	TSVs, Hybrid Bonding	Very High	Very High	Highest	Stacked Memory, Logic-on-Memory, Future Logic-on-Logic	Intel Foveros, AMD 3D V-Cache 8

III. The Catalyst for Change: The Evolving Economics of Moore’s Law

The industry-wide pivot to multi-die architectures is not a voluntary choice driven by a quest for novelty; it is a necessary response to the fundamental breakdown of the economic and physical scaling models that have governed semiconductor progress for half a century. The historical engine of Moore’s Law, while not entirely stalled, is no longer providing the exponential benefits it once did, forcing the industry to find new avenues for innovation.

3.1 The Slowdown of Traditional Scaling

For decades, Moore’s Law was a self-fulfilling prophecy: the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubled approximately every two years, leading to concurrent improvements in performance and cost.6 This reliable cadence of progress, however, has faltered.

Moore’s Law Evolution: The observation made by Gordon Moore in 1965 has been the primary driver of the digital revolution.27 However, in recent years, the complexity of manufacturing at nanometer scales has extended this doubling interval to approximately three to four years.28 More critically, the associated economic benefits have evaporated. The true engine of progress was not just about transistor density but also about the corresponding improvements in performance and power efficiency, a trend known as Dennard scaling.
The End of Dennard Scaling: Formulated in 1974, Dennard scaling observed that as transistors shrank, their power density remained constant. This meant that smaller, faster transistors did not get proportionally hotter, providing a “free lunch” where performance could be increased without a power penalty.26 This crucial relationship broke down around the mid-2000s. Since then, while transistors have continued to shrink, their power density has increased, leading to the “power wall” and “thermal wall,” where managing power consumption and heat dissipation have become the primary constraints in chip design.6
Physical Limits: At the cutting-edge process nodes of 5nm, 3nm, and now 2nm, designers are confronting the fundamental limits of silicon physics.28 As transistor features shrink to the size of just a few atoms, quantum mechanical effects, such as electron tunneling, become significant. This leads to leakage currents, where transistors consume power even when they are not actively switching. This wasted power generates excess heat, which can negate any performance gains from the smaller feature sizes and compromise the reliability of the chip.6

3.2 The Skyrocketing Cost of Advanced Nodes

The most compelling driver for the shift to multi-die architectures is the dramatic and unsustainable escalation in the cost of advanced semiconductor manufacturing. The historical trend of cost reduction per transistor has ended.

Historically, each new, denser process node delivered cheaper transistors. However, beyond the 5nm node, this cost reduction has slowed, stopped, or even reversed.28 The extreme precision and complexity required to manufacture at these scales have driven costs to astronomical levels.
The capital expenditure required is immense. A single Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine, which is essential for manufacturing nodes below 7nm, can cost upwards of $150 million.28 The total cost of designing, verifying, and masking a new chip at these advanced nodes can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
This economic reality makes designing a large, monolithic SoC an incredibly high-risk proposition. A single design flaw or a cluster of manufacturing defects can render a massive, expensive die useless, resulting in a catastrophic financial loss. By partitioning the design into smaller, more manageable chiplets, the financial risk is also partitioned. The yield for smaller dies is exponentially higher, and the cost of discarding a single defective chiplet is a fraction of the cost of discarding a full monolithic SoC.4

This economic breakdown is creating a permanent divergence in how process nodes are utilized. The most advanced and expensive nodes will be reserved exclusively for the most performance-critical functions, such as CPU and GPU compute cores. The bulk of a system’s silicon area, which includes components like I/O controllers, analog circuits, and power management, will remain on older, more cost-effective “long-lived” nodes. This is not a temporary trend but the new, permanent state of semiconductor design. It is economically irrational to build a monolithic SoC where the entire die, including the I/O that gains no benefit, is fabricated on a costly 3nm process. The chiplet architecture is the only practical way to bridge this economically-driven divergence, allowing designers to assemble a system using the optimal process node for each specific function.

3.3 Redefining Progress: “More than Moore”

In response to these challenges, the semiconductor industry is undergoing a strategic shift in its definition of progress. The focus is moving away from a singular reliance on transistor scaling (“More Moore”) and toward a more holistic approach that emphasizes innovation in system architecture, packaging, and integration (“More than Moore”).

Multi-die design is the quintessential “More than Moore” strategy. It provides a path to continue scaling system-level performance, functionality, and efficiency even as the scaling of a single chip slows down.5 By disaggregating monolithic designs and re-integrating them at the package level, the industry is finding new methods to maintain the exponential growth in computing capability that the world now demands. System-level integration, enabled by advanced packaging, has become the new frontier for semiconductor innovation.22

IV. The Enablers: Advanced Packaging and Interconnect Standards

The theoretical benefits of multi-die architectures can only be realized through the practical application of two critical enablers: mature, high-volume advanced packaging platforms from leading foundries, and open, robust interconnect standards that facilitate a multi-vendor ecosystem. Both have now reached a critical stage of development, making the 2025 prediction a reality.

4.1 Foundry Innovations: A Comparative Analysis of Leading Packaging Platforms

The world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers have invested billions of dollars to develop sophisticated packaging technologies capable of integrating multiple chiplets into a single, high-performance product.

TSMC’s 3DFabric and CoWoS Ecosystem: TSMC, the world’s largest contract manufacturer, has established a dominant position in advanced packaging with its comprehensive 3DFabric portfolio, of which CoWoS is a key component. CoWoS has become the de facto standard for high-performance 2.5D integration, particularly for AI accelerators that require the integration of logic dies with HBM stacks.7

CoWoS-S (Silicon Interposer): This is the flagship offering, utilizing a large silicon interposer (capable of exceeding three times the standard reticle size, or ~2700 mm2) to provide ultra-high-density interconnects between multiple logic chiplets and HBM cubes. It is the workhorse technology behind many of today’s leading AI and HPC processors.7
CoWoS-R (RDL Interposer): To address cost sensitivity, this variant uses an interposer made from a polymer-based Redistribution Layer (RDL) instead of silicon. While it has a lower interconnect density, it provides a more cost-effective solution for applications that do not require the absolute peak performance of CoWoS-S.7
CoWoS-L (LSI + RDL): This innovative hybrid approach embeds small, high-density local silicon interconnects (LSI), also known as bridges, within a larger, more economical RDL interposer. This provides a scalable solution that blends the high-performance routing of silicon with the cost-effectiveness and large area capability of RDL, offering significant design flexibility.7

Intel’s Foveros and EMIB Technologies: As a cornerstone of its IDM 2.0 strategy, Intel has developed a powerful and versatile suite of proprietary packaging solutions that enable the construction of highly complex heterogeneous systems.

EMIB (Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge): This is Intel’s elegant and cost-effective 2.5D solution. Instead of a full, expensive silicon interposer, EMIB embeds small silicon bridges into a standard organic package substrate only where ultra-high-density connections are needed between adjacent chiplets. This provides shoreline-to-shoreline high-bandwidth links without the cost of a full interposer.8
Foveros: This is Intel’s true 3D stacking technology. It enables face-to-face, direct copper-to-copper hybrid bonding, which provides ultra-high-density, low-power vertical interconnects between stacked chiplets. This technology allows for the stacking of logic on logic or memory on logic in an active-on-active configuration.8
Co-EMIB (or EMIB 3.5D): This represents the pinnacle of Intel’s integration capability, combining both technologies in a single package. It allows for 3D-stacked Foveros chiplets to be connected horizontally to other chiplets or HBM stacks using EMIB. This enables the creation of extremely complex systems with a wide variety of dies, as exemplified by the Intel Data Center GPU Max Series (Ponte Vecchio).8

4.2 The Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe): Forging an Open Ecosystem

While proprietary packaging technologies are powerful, the full potential of the chiplet paradigm can only be unlocked through standardization. An open standard is required to create a true “mix-and-match” marketplace where chiplets from different vendors can be reliably integrated. The Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) is that standard.22

The Need for a Standard: Without a standard, chiplet-based designs are confined to closed, proprietary ecosystems where a single company designs all the interconnected components. UCIe was created to address customer demand for more customizable, package-level integration by enabling a multi-vendor ecosystem.32
Consortium and Goals: UCIe is an open industry specification developed and promoted by a consortium of nearly all major players in the semiconductor industry, including Intel, AMD, Arm, NVIDIA, TSMC, Samsung, and major cloud service providers like Google and Microsoft.9 The consortium’s goal is to provide a ubiquitous, high-bandwidth, low-latency, power-efficient, and cost-effective on-package interconnect standard for die-to-die communication.32
Technical Foundation and Evolution: To accelerate adoption and ensure compatibility with existing hardware and software, the UCIe protocol layer is built upon the well-established and widely used PCI Express (PCIe) and Compute Express Link (CXL) standards.9 The standard is evolving at a rapid pace, a clear indicator of strong industry momentum. The 1.0 specification was released in March 2022, and subsequent versions have quickly added critical new capabilities, demonstrating the consortium’s commitment to building a comprehensive and future-proof standard.9

The development of UCIe is more than just a technical exercise; it represents a strategic shift that could fundamentally alter the competitive landscape of the semiconductor industry. Historically, companies like Intel and NVIDIA have operated on vertically integrated business models, controlling the entire design from the transistor architecture to the software stack. This created powerful, high-margin “walled gardens.” The chiplet model, once fully enabled by a mature UCIe standard, threatens this model by allowing for the disaggregation of the system. A system designer could, in theory, purchase a best-in-class GPU compute chiplet from one vendor, a high-performance I/O chiplet from a second, and a custom AI accelerator chiplet from a startup, and then integrate them all into a single, optimized package. This breaks the vertical monopoly, shifting value from the complete, proprietary SoC to the individual, best-in-class chiplet. This lowers the barrier to entry for new hardware companies, as they can focus on innovating in a single, high-value function rather than designing an entire complex system. Therefore, UCIe is not just a technical standard; it is a potentially disruptive commercial force that will foster a more open, competitive, and innovative hardware ecosystem over the long term.

Table 3: The UCIe Standard Evolution
Specification	Release Date	Key Features Added	Industry Impact
UCIe 1.0	March 2022	Initial physical layer (up to 32 GT/s), protocol stack based on PCIe/CXL, support for standard (2D) and advanced (2.5D) packaging.	Established the foundational open standard, creating a common language for die-to-die interconnects and kickstarting the open ecosystem.9
UCIe 1.1	August 2023	Enhanced reliability mechanisms, architectural attributes for compliance testing, support for simultaneous multiprotocol streams.	Improved robustness and interoperability, making the standard more suitable for demanding applications like automotive and high-reliability systems.9
UCIe 2.0	August 2024	Added support for 3D packaging (hybrid bonding), introduced a holistic Design-for-X (DFx) architecture for system-level manageability, test, and debug.	Enabled the next generation of integration by standardizing 3D connections and provided a crucial framework for managing the lifecycle of complex multi-chiplet systems.9
UCIe 3.0 (Preview)	August 2024	Increased data rates to 48 GT/s and 64 GT/s, extended sideband channel reach, support for continuous transmission protocols.	Doubled the bandwidth to meet the demands of future HPC and AI workloads, enhancing performance and enabling more flexible system topologies.34

V. Market Analysis: Quantifying the Multi-Die Revolution

The technological drivers compelling the shift to multi-die architectures are validated by overwhelming commercial momentum. Market forecasts from multiple industry analysis firms project a period of explosive growth for the advanced packaging and chiplet sectors, with the HPC and AI markets serving as the primary catalysts.

5.1 Market Sizing and Forecasts

Quantitative analysis confirms that multi-die integration is not a niche technology but is rapidly becoming a dominant segment of the semiconductor market.

Advanced Packaging Market: The global market for advanced chip packaging is on a steep growth trajectory. Projections estimate the market value at approximately $50.38 billion in 2025, growing to $79.85 billion by 2032, which represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.8%.36 Other, more aggressive forecasts project the market growing from $35 billion in 2023 to as much as $158 billion by 2033, with a significant portion of that growth attributed to 3D SoC and stacked memory solutions.18
Chiplet Marketplace: When viewed through the lens of the chiplet model itself, the market potential is even more staggering. One projection indicates that the chiplet marketplace could reach $411 billion by 2028.18 This valuation reflects the total value of the systems enabled by this design methodology, underscoring its central role in the future of the industry.
Regional Dominance: The geographic landscape of advanced packaging is led by the Asia-Pacific region, which is expected to hold a market share of over 53% in 2025.36 This dominance is due to the concentration of leading foundries like TSMC and Samsung, as well as major Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) providers. North America, however, is projected to be the fastest-growing region, driven by the intense R&D and design leadership of fabless and IDM companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, who are the primary architects of the world’s most advanced HPC chips.37

5.2 Primary Growth Engines

The demand for multi-die systems is not uniform across all segments of the electronics industry. The transition is being pulled forward by specific high-growth sectors with the most demanding performance requirements.

AI and HPC: This is the undisputed engine of growth for advanced packaging.2 The architecture of modern AI accelerators is predicated on multi-die integration. These systems require massive parallel processing capabilities, which are often achieved by tiling multiple compute dies together, and they need extremely high memory bandwidth, which is supplied by integrating multiple HBM stacks adjacent to the logic dies using 2.5D packaging.10 The total semiconductor market for data centers is forecast to surge from $209 billion in 2024 to nearly $500 billion by 2030, with GPUs and custom AI ASICs representing the largest and fastest-growing components of this market.10
5G and Consumer Electronics: While HPC leads, other markets are following. The relentless drive for miniaturization and higher performance in high-end consumer electronics, such as flagship smartphones, is a significant driver for advanced packaging technologies like fan-out wafer-level packaging (FOWLP) and package-on-package (PoP).36
Automotive: The rapid evolution of vehicles into “data centers on wheels” is creating strong demand for multi-die solutions. Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS), autonomous driving platforms, and complex in-vehicle infotainment systems require robust, reliable, and powerful computing solutions that can be efficiently packaged, making the automotive sector a key long-term growth driver.2

The user’s prediction for HPC is, in effect, a leading indicator for the entire semiconductor industry. The extreme performance requirements and large R&D budgets of the HPC and AI sectors are forcing the adoption of multi-die architectures first. These segments are serving as the proving ground for these complex and initially expensive technologies. However, the core economic advantages of the chiplet model—namely, higher manufacturing yields and the ability to mix process nodes for cost optimization—are universally applicable. As these advanced packaging technologies mature, scale, and inevitably see their costs decline, the economic benefits will become compelling for more cost-sensitive, high-volume markets. The 50% adoption threshold in new HPC designs by 2025 is therefore not an endpoint but a harbinger, signaling the beginning of a much broader, industry-wide architectural transformation that will redefine chip design across most major market segments by the end of the decade.

5.3 The Supply Chain Transformation

The move from monolithic SoCs to multi-die Systems-in-Package is fundamentally reshaping the roles and relationships within the semiconductor supply chain.

New Roles for Foundries and OSATs: In the monolithic era, the foundry’s primary role was front-end wafer fabrication. In the multi-die era, leading foundries like TSMC and Intel are moving “up the value chain” to become critical partners in back-end assembly and integration. They are no longer just providing wafers; they are providing complete, integrated packaging services.1 OSATs are also investing heavily to develop their own advanced packaging capabilities to compete in this high-value market.
The Centrality of EDA Vendors: The sheer complexity of designing, verifying, and analyzing a multi-die system places a massive premium on sophisticated Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software. Companies like Synopsys and Cadence are at the forefront, developing integrated platforms and workflows that can handle holistic die/package co-design. These tools must be able to simulate thermal effects, power delivery networks, and signal integrity across multiple, interacting dies simultaneously—a challenge an order of magnitude more complex than single-die design.1

VI. Case Studies in HPC: The Architectural Vanguard

The most definitive proof for the user’s thesis comes not from forecasts or technical specifications, but from the tangible product roadmaps of the three key players in the HPC market: AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA. Each has unequivocally and independently adopted multi-die architectures for their flagship, highest-performance products, signaling a point of no return for the industry.

6.1 AMD’s Chiplet Blueprint: The Evolution of the EPYC Processor

AMD was the first major semiconductor company to successfully commercialize a chiplet-based architecture for the high-performance x86 server market, and the continued success of its EPYC CPU line stands as a powerful testament to the viability and advantages of this approach.11

Architectural Evolution:

1st Gen (Naples): Launched in 2017, the first EPYC processor utilized a multi-chip module (MCM) design, integrating four identical 8-core “Zeppelin” compute dies, fabricated on a 14nm process, on a single organic substrate. While a relatively simple 2D integration, it proved the concept’s viability and allowed AMD to re-enter the server market with a competitive, high-core-count product.11
2nd/3rd Gen (Rome/Milan): This is where AMD introduced its revolutionary “hybrid multi-die” architecture. These processors feature up to eight 7nm compute chiplets (Core Complex Dies or CCDs) surrounding a central, larger 14nm I/O die (IOD). This design is a perfect real-world example of heterogeneous integration. It decouples the innovation paths for the CPU cores and the I/O functions, allowing the cores to be built on the most advanced logic process available (7nm) while the I/O, which includes memory controllers and PCIe lanes, is built on a mature, cost-effective, and high-yielding process (14nm).11
3rd Gen Milan-X: With this mid-cycle refresh, AMD took its first major step into true 3D integration. Using a technology called 3D V-Cache, AMD bonded an additional 64MB L3 cache die directly on top of each of the eight compute chiplets. This vertical stacking dramatically increased the available L3 cache per processor, providing significant performance boosts for specific HPC workloads that are sensitive to memory latency.11
4th/5th Gen (Genoa/Turin): AMD’s latest generations continue to build on this successful hybrid model, demonstrating its immense scalability. These processors scale up to 12 compute chiplets (using 5nm and 3nm processes) connected to an advanced 6nm I/O die, enabling core counts to reach as high as 192 per socket. This consistent architectural strategy underscores AMD’s long-term commitment to the chiplet paradigm.11

6.2 Intel’s Heterogeneous Vision: The Data Center GPU Max Series (Ponte Vecchio)

Intel’s Data Center GPU Max Series, codenamed Ponte Vecchio, is arguably the most complex and ambitious example of heterogeneous integration ever put into mass production. It serves as a powerful demonstration of Intel’s advanced packaging portfolio and its vision for a “tile-based” or chiplet-centric future.12

Deconstructing the Architecture: Ponte Vecchio is not a single chip but a System-in-Package comprising 47 distinct, active silicon tiles (chiplets). These tiles are fabricated across five different process nodes from both Intel and TSMC, making it a true showcase of multi-vendor, heterogeneous integration.8
Packaging Technologies: The device is a masterclass in advanced packaging, utilizing both of Intel’s flagship technologies. EMIB (2.5D) is used to provide high-bandwidth connections between the compute tiles and HBM memory stacks. Foveros (3D) is used to stack high-speed L2 cache tiles directly on top of the base tiles. The combination of these technologies in a single package is what Intel refers to as Co-EMIB or EMIB 3.5D.8
Components: The system is assembled from multiple specialized chiplets: Compute Tiles (containing the Xe-HPC cores), Base Tiles (containing L2 cache and the system fabric), HBM Tiles, and Xe Link Tiles for high-speed I/O. These are all intricately connected to form a single, massive logical GPU with over 100 billion transistors.12

6.3 NVIDIA’s Multi-Chip Juggernaut: From Grace Hopper to Blackwell

NVIDIA, the dominant player in the AI accelerator market, has also fully embraced multi-die architectures for its latest and most powerful HPC products, recognizing that this is the only path to achieving the performance required by next-generation AI models.

Grace Hopper Superchip: This product is a prime example of a 2.5D multi-chip module designed for heterogeneous computing. It combines two distinct, large chips on a single package: an NVIDIA Grace CPU (featuring 72 Arm Neoverse V2 cores) and an NVIDIA Hopper H100 GPU.45 These two chips are connected by a proprietary, ultra-high-bandwidth (900 GB/s) NVLink-C2C interconnect. This tight, cache-coherent integration allows the GPU to directly access the CPU’s memory, and vice-versa, creating a unified memory space that massively simplifies programming and boosts performance for HPC and AI workloads that process terabyte-scale datasets.45
Blackwell Architecture (B200): NVIDIA’s latest architecture takes the next logical step beyond heterogeneous integration to homogeneous scaling. The flagship B200 GPU is not a monolithic chip. It is composed of two massive, reticle-limit GPU dies that are “stitched” together to function as a single, unified CUDA GPU.13

NV-HBI Interconnect: The two dies are connected by a custom 10 TB/s NV-High Bandwidth Interface (NV-HBI). This incredibly fast interconnect ensures full cache coherency between the two dies, making them appear as a single, seamless accelerator to the programmer and the software stack.13
Packaging: This feat of engineering is achieved using TSMC’s advanced CoWoS-L 2.5D packaging technology. This dual-die design allows NVIDIA to pack an unprecedented 208 billion transistors into a single logical GPU, a scale that would be physically impossible to achieve with a monolithic approach due to the hard reticle limits of semiconductor manufacturing.25

The architectural strategies of the three main HPC competitors have unequivocally converged. Despite their different business models (AMD is fabless, Intel is an IDM) and their distinct design philosophies (AMD’s CPU/IO split, Intel’s tile-based “Lego” system, NVIDIA’s die-stitching), they have all independently arrived at the same conclusion: multi-die integration is the only viable path forward for achieving leadership performance in the post-Moore’s Law era. This unanimous adoption by the market leaders for their most critical, flagship products is the single most powerful piece of evidence validating the user’s prediction. This is not a coincidence; it is a convergent evolution driven by the same inescapable physics and economics of semiconductor manufacturing. When all major competitors arrive at the same fundamental architectural solution, it ceases to be a “trend” and becomes the established, dominant design paradigm.

Table 2: Architectural Evolution of Leading Multi-Die HPC Processors
Processor	Architecture Type	Chiplet Configuration	Interconnect Tech	Process Nodes Used	Key Innovation Enabled by Multi-Die
AMD EPYC Genoa (9004 Series)	2.5D Hybrid MCM	Up to 12x 5nm ‘Zen 4’ CCDs + 1x 6nm I/O Die	Infinity Fabric	5nm, 6nm	Decoupled innovation paths for logic and I/O; massive core-count scaling.11
Intel Ponte Vecchio (Data Center GPU Max)	3.5D Heterogeneous SiP	47 active tiles (Compute, Base, Cache, HBM, Link)	EMIB (2.5D) + Foveros (3D)	Intel 7, Intel 4, TSMC N5, etc.	Extreme heterogeneous integration of tiles from multiple vendors and process nodes.8
NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip	2.5D Heterogeneous MCM	1x Grace CPU Die + 1x Hopper H100 GPU Die	NVLink-C2C (900 GB/s)	TSMC 4N	Unified, coherent memory space between a high-performance CPU and GPU on a single package.45
NVIDIA Blackwell B200	2.5D Dual-Die MCM	2x Blackwell GPU Dies	NV-HBI (10 TB/s)	TSMC 4NP	Bypassing reticle limits to create a single, unified GPU with 208B transistors.13

VII. Overcoming the Hurdles: The Engineering Challenges of System-in-Package Design

While the shift to multi-die architectures is inevitable, it is not without significant engineering challenges. The transition from designing a 2D chip to a 3D System-in-Package introduces new levels of complexity in thermal management, design and verification, and supply chain logistics. These hurdles must be overcome to fully realize the benefits of this new paradigm.

7.1 The Thermal Wall: Managing Heat Density in Stacked Architectures

Thermal management is arguably the single greatest challenge in 2.5D and especially 3D IC design.15 Stacking multiple active dies on top of each other dramatically increases the power density (watts per square millimeter) of the package.

Heat generated in the lower dies has a much longer and more thermally resistive path to the heatsink, which is typically placed on top of the stack.19 This can lead to significant temperature increases and the creation of localized hotspots that can degrade performance, reduce the lifespan of the chip, and even cause catastrophic failure.15
Furthermore, variations in temperature across the different layers can create thermal gradients. These gradients cause mechanical stress due to the different rates of thermal expansion of the various materials in the stack (silicon, copper, dielectric), which can potentially lead to the cracking of interconnects and a loss of reliability.29
Mitigation Strategies: Solving these thermal challenges requires a multi-pronged approach. Sophisticated thermal modeling and simulation tools that can analyze the entire system—from the individual transistor to the package and heatsink—are now essential parts of the design flow.15 Physical solutions include the development of advanced, highly conductive Thermal Interface Materials (TIMs) to improve heat transfer between layers.29 At the architectural level, designers employ techniques like Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS), which can dynamically adjust the power consumption of individual chiplets based on their workload and thermal state.52 Looking to the future, researchers are actively developing more advanced cooling solutions, such as microfluidic cooling, which involves etching tiny channels directly into the silicon dies to allow a liquid coolant to flow through the chip stack and remove heat directly at the source.29

7.2 Complexity in Design, Verification, and Testing

The complexity of designing and verifying a system composed of multiple interacting dies is an order of magnitude greater than that of a monolithic SoC.

Holistic EDA Tools: Traditional EDA tools were designed to optimize a single die. Multi-die systems require a new class of tools that can perform holistic, system-level co-design and analysis. These platforms must be able to model and verify power delivery, signal integrity, and thermal effects across the boundaries of multiple dies and the package simultaneously.1
Known-Good-Die (KGD): A critical manufacturing and economic challenge is ensuring that every single chiplet is fully tested and known to be 100% functional before it is assembled into the final, expensive package. In a multi-die system containing dozens of chiplets, a single faulty chiplet can render the entire multi-thousand-dollar device useless. This necessitates the development of robust and comprehensive wafer-level and die-level testing methodologies to weed out any defective parts before assembly.8
Interconnect Complexity: Ensuring the integrity of both power and signals across thousands of ultra-fine-pitch, high-speed interconnects between dies is a major engineering challenge. Issues like crosstalk, voltage droop (IR drop), and signal attenuation must be meticulously modeled and managed to ensure the system operates reliably.15

7.3 Supply Chain and Ecosystem Logistics

The disaggregation of the SoC into chiplets also leads to the disaggregation of the supply chain, introducing new logistical and commercial complexities.

A single System-in-Package may involve compute chiplets from one vendor fabricated at TSMC, I/O chiplets from another vendor fabricated at GlobalFoundries, and final assembly and testing performed by a third-party OSAT like ASE Group. Coordinating this complex, multi-party supply chain requires a new level of collaboration and planning.16
This multi-vendor environment also raises complex questions regarding liability, IP ownership, security, and authentication. If the final packaged system fails, who is responsible? How is sensitive IP protected when dies from multiple companies are integrated? Standards like UCIe are beginning to address these issues by incorporating frameworks for security and system manageability, but they remain a key area of focus for the maturing ecosystem.31

The emergence of these challenges signals a critical shift in the semiconductor industry. The primary battleground for competitive advantage in HPC is migrating from the front-end of the manufacturing process (access to the most advanced transistor technology) to the back-end of the process (system integration, packaging, and testing). While access to a leading-edge process node like TSMC’s 3nm remains a key differentiator, it is becoming a shared resource for major fabless companies. The true, sustainable competitive advantage will increasingly be found in how companies architect and integrate their systems. Proprietary, high-performance interconnects like NVIDIA’s NV-HBI, unique packaging technologies like Intel’s Co-EMIB, and the mastery of the immense engineering challenges of thermal management, power delivery, and system-level testing for a 200-billion-transistor device are the new frontiers of innovation. Leadership will be defined less by having the best transistors and more by having the best system architecture. The value is migrating from the wafer to the package.

VIII. Conclusion and Strategic Outlook: The 2025 Inflection Point

The convergence of technological necessity, economic reality, and market demand has created an unstoppable momentum toward multi-die architectures in high-performance computing. The analysis of the primary drivers, the maturation of enabling technologies, strong market forecasts, and the convergent product roadmaps of all major industry players provides overwhelming evidence to validate the central thesis of this report.

8.1 Verdict on the Prediction: A Resounding Confirmation

The prediction that “at least half of new HPC chip designs will be 2.5D or 3D multi-die in 2025” is not merely plausible; it is an accurate description of the current state and near-term trajectory of the industry.1 The evidence presented throughout this report leads to a resounding confirmation of this statement.

For the highest-performance tier of HPC and AI—the systems that define the cutting edge—the adoption rate for new designs is already approaching 100%. The flagship products from AMD (EPYC), Intel (Data Center GPU Max), and NVIDIA (Grace Hopper, Blackwell) are all complex multi-die systems. This unanimous adoption by the market leaders, driven by the inescapable physics and economics of the post-Moore’s Law era, solidifies the multi-die approach as the new, dominant design paradigm for high-performance computing. The 2025 prediction is not a forecast of a distant future, but rather a description of a transition that is already well underway and will be firmly established by that time.

8.2 Future Trajectory: Beyond 2025

The journey of system-level integration does not end with the 2.5D architectures that are prevalent today. The industry will continue to push the boundaries of packaging and interconnect technology in pursuit of greater performance and efficiency.

The Rise of True 3D Stacking: While 3D integration is used today, primarily for stacking memory on logic (HBM) or cache on logic (AMD 3D V-Cache), the next frontier is the widespread adoption of direct logic-on-logic stacking using hybrid bonding. This will enable even greater interconnect density and lower power consumption, allowing for the creation of tightly coupled, highly specialized computational blocks.16
The Integration of Co-Packaged Optics (CPO): As the bandwidth requirements for large-scale AI training clusters continue to grow exponentially, electrical interconnects between systems will eventually become a bottleneck. The next evolutionary step will be to integrate optical I/O chiplets directly into the processor package. Co-Packaged Optics will allow for massive increases in I/O bandwidth at significantly lower power levels, enabling the construction of the exascale and zettascale AI systems of the future.3
A Flourishing Open Chiplet Ecosystem: As the UCIe standard continues to mature and gain widespread adoption, it will likely foster the creation of a vibrant, open market for third-party chiplets.22 This will enable a new wave of innovation in custom silicon, allowing system designers to create highly optimized, domain-specific accelerators for specialized workloads by integrating best-in-class components from a diverse range of vendors.

8.3 Strategic Recommendations

This fundamental architectural shift necessitates a corresponding shift in strategy for all players in the semiconductor ecosystem.

For Chip Designers: The era of designing in isolation is over. A “system-first” design philosophy must be embraced. Expertise in die/package co-design, multi-physics simulation (thermal, power, signal integrity), and system-level verification is now as critical as traditional RTL design skills. The value of an engineer will increasingly be measured by their ability to think and design across the boundaries of the chip, the package, and the system.
For System Architects: The chiplet paradigm provides unprecedented architectural freedom. The ability to mix and match process technologies, IP from different vendors, and custom functional blocks enables the creation of highly optimized, domain-specific hardware that was previously economically unfeasible. Architects should aggressively leverage this new flexibility to build systems that are precisely tailored to the demands of their target workloads.
For Technology Investors: The investment landscape is being reshaped. While opportunities will continue to exist in innovative fabless design houses, the center of value creation is expanding. Significant opportunities will arise in the enabling ecosystem: advanced OSATs with unique packaging capabilities, EDA companies providing the next generation of multi-die design tools, and innovative startups developing specialized, UCIe-compliant chiplets for the emerging open market. The back-end of the semiconductor process—packaging, assembly, and test—is becoming the new frontier for high-margin innovation and investment.

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