[News] Chinese Academy of Sciences Designs 256-Core Processor, Plans Expansion to 1,600-Core Big Chip

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In pursuit of big chip technology, a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has designed an advanced 256-core processor system based on 16 chiplets and aims to expand this design to a 1,600-core big chip.

With each new generation of chips, increasing transistor density becomes progressively challenging. Chip manufacturers are exploring various methods to enhance processor performance, including architectural innovations, larger die sizes, multi-chiplet designs, and wafer-scale chips.

In a recent research paper, the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has introduced a 256-core multi-chiplet design and further explored wafer-scale methods, constructing a big chip using an entire wafer.

The team presented an advanced 256-CPU multi-chiplet, referred to as the Zhejiang Big Chip, in the paper. This design is composed of 16 chiplets, each housing 16 CPUs based on the RISC-V architecture.

These chiplets are interconnected in a traditional symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) manner through a network-on-chip, so the chiplets could share memory.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences stated that this design allows for scalability up to 100 chiplets (or 1,600-core).

Reports indicate that the chiplets are manufactured by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) using 22-nm process technology. However, the power consumption of a 1,600-core component interconnected by an interposer and manufactured using a 22-nm process is not specified.

Researchers have noted that the multi-chiplet design can be applied to supercomputer processors. Within each chiplet, multiple cores are interconnected with ultra-low latency. Additionally, advanced packaging technology benefits the communication between chiplets, minimizing delays and NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) effects in highly scalable systems to the greatest extent possible.

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(Photo credit: SMIC)