Alphawave Semi showcased 3nm chiplet-based connectivity solutions for high-performance datacenter applications.
Alphawave Semi announced the successful bring-up of its first connectivity silicon platform on TSMC's most advanced 3nm process, featuring its ZeusCORE Extra-Long-Reach (XLR) 1-112Gbps NRZ/PAM4 serialiser-deserialiser ("SerDes") IP. An industry-first live demo of the silicon platform with 112G Ethernet and PCIe 6.0 IP on TSMC 3nm process was unveiled at the TSMC North America Symposium in Santa Clara, CA on April 26, 2023.
The 3nm process platform proves crucial for developing the next generation of advanced chips needed to manage exponential growth in AI-generated data. The ZeusCORE XLR Multi-Standard-Serdes (MSS) IP delivers the highest performance SerDes in Alphawave Semi's product portfolio, enabling higher performance, enhanced memory and I/O bandwidth, and reduced power consumption. The highly configurable IP supports all leading edge NRZ and PAM4 data center standards from 1-112 Gbps, encompassing diverse protocols including PCIe Gen1 to Gen6 and 1G/10G/25G/50G/100 Gbps Ethernet.
The flexible connectivity IP solution combines with Alphawave Semi's chiplet-enabled custom silicon platform, which includes IO, memory and compute chiplets, enabling end-users to produce high performance silicon tailored to their applications. Customers can leverage Alphawave Semi's application optimized IP-subsystems and advanced 2.5D/3D packaging expertise to integrate advanced interfaces such as Compute Express Link (CXL), Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe), High Bandwidth Memory (HBMx), and Low-Power Double Data Rate DRAM (LP/DDRx) onto custom chips and chiplets.
Tony Pialis, CEO and co-founder of Alphawave Semi, stated: "We are thrilled to be one of the first companies to successfully demonstrate our highest performance silicon platform with our XLR 112G Ethernet and PCIE6.0 SerDes IP on TSMC's most advanced 3nm technology. This represents a significant step forward in our execution of Alphawave Semi's strategy to be a vertically integrated semiconductor leader in high-speed connectivity." Mohit Gupta, SVP and GM of Custom Silicon and IP, added: "We're engaging our leading customers on chiplet-enabled 3nm custom silicon platforms which include IO, memory, and compute chiplets. Our Virtual Channel Aggregator (VCA) partnership with TSMC has provided invaluable support, and we look forward to accelerating our customers' high-performance designs on TSMC's 3nm process."
Founded in 2017 by an expert technical team with a proven track record in licensing semiconductor IP, Alphawave Semi operates as a vertically integrated semiconductor company. The company's IP, custom silicon, and connectivity products are deployed by global tier-one customers in data centers, compute, networking, AI, 5G, autonomous vehicles, and storage applications, with the core mission to accelerate the critical data infrastructure at the heart of the digital world.