Chiplet Makers Expect to Disrupt Incumbents

By Alan Patterson, EETimes (January 16, 2024)

Executives at chip startups Tenstorrent and Alphawave foresee a day when their firms’ sales of chiplets and IP erodes the business of incumbent chip vendors like Qualcomm.

An SoC customer must buy graphics, image signal processing, media, application processing, Arm cores, a modem and security all in one chip, Tenstorrent COO Keith Witek told EE Times, noting that chiplets allow more choices.

“With chiplets, you can say, ‘I don’t want to get $130 of my solution from Qualcomm.’ In fact, somebody might say, ‘I only think their modem is good. The rest of the stuff I can get from a different chip’.” Witek emphasized that he gave Qualcomm as an example only.

Designers Alphawave and Tenstorrent expect chiplets to sell like commodities in a marketplace. That remains only an expectation.

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