A Chiplet Platform for Intelligent Radar/Sonar Leveraging Domain-Specific Reusable Active Interposer

Abstract

Through chiplet reuse, chiplet-based system designs have emerged as a cost-effective solution for system-on-chips (SoCs), yet considerable silicon interposer costs often negate the benefits. Though general reusable interposers (GRIs) can lower the cost, they often compromise on performance and energy efficiency. In this article, a domain-specific reusable active interposer (active DSRI) approach is proposed for a better cost-efficiency tradeoff. Moreover, a chiplet platform based on an active DSRI designed for the intelligent radar/sonar (IRS) domain is introduced to facilitate rapid and customized SoC development. This platform offers flexible and energy-efficient interconnections tailored for IRS, platform infrastructure functions, and peripherals to simplify the chiplets. Furthermore, it integrates lightweight, composable standard 3-D interfaces across the chiplets and interposer, delivering up to 96-Gb/s bandwidth, 11.1-ns latency, and 0.62-pJ/bit energy efficiency, well controlling the cost and power penalties of SoC partition. Demonstrated with a customized hand gesture recognition sonar system (HGRSS) baseband SoC implemented on the proposed platform, it achieves similar performance to a monolithic SoC, with a recognition frame rate of 6286 frames/s, where overhead of the 3-D interface is only 6.86% in area and 4.84% in power. Our approach proves cost-effective, energy efficient, and customizable, moving system volume breakeven point forward by $3.22\sim 3.36$ times, and reducing the cost by 58.5%~59.8%. This represents a pioneering demonstration of reusable chiplets in HGRSS, showcasing the potential of our approach for broader domains.