imec and ASRA Release Joint Architectural Requirements for Interoperable Automotive Chiplets

Imec, a global center for advanced semiconductor research and innovation, and Japan’s Advanced SoC Research for Automotive (ASRA), today announced the release of the Automotive Chiplet Interoperability Requirement (ACIR), a joint document that complements existing standards by establishing a common set of architectural requirements for interoperable automotive chiplets. Unveiled at this week’s Autonomous Edge Chiplet Forum (AECF) in Japan, ACIR aims to support cross-vendor integration and interoperability in an open chiplet ecosystem, helping accelerate and de-risk automotive chiplet adoption.

Cars’ high-performance computing (HPC) requirements are growing at a rapid pace, fueled by ever more sophisticated driver-assistance systems, (semi-)autonomous driving functionality, intelligent cockpit solutions, and the increasingly complex AI workloads that underpin such applications.

Traditionally, this need for compute has been met by monolithic systems-on-chip (SoCs). But as system complexity continues to increase, development time and cost mount accordingly – making the monolithic SoC approach difficult to sustain.

Chiplet-based architectures offer a promising alternative by combining independently developed dies, each optimized for specific functions and cost targets. However, unlocking their full potential requires more than simply connecting chiplets from different suppliers. They must also work together at system level. Achieving this necessitates a shared set of architectural requirements that complement existing automotive chiplet standards.

ACIR: architectural requirements for interoperable automotive chiplets

The Automotive Chiplet Interoperability Requirement (ACIR) document addresses this challenge. Jointly developed by Japan’s Advanced SoC Research for Automotive (ASRA) and imec’s Autonomous Edge Chiplet Program (AECP), it defines architectural requirements for interoperable automotive chiplets – covering areas including error and system management, boot sequencing, power management, functional safety, and automotive-specific interoperability.

For example, ACIR aligns key die-to-die connectivity requirements so that independently developed chiplets can communicate and interoperate once integrated into a larger system. And functional safety is addressed by defining a common error reporting infrastructure that allows making safe and predictable decisions when faults occur.

“ACIR is intended as an open reference for the broader automotive and semiconductor ecosystem, including OEMs, Tier-1 suppliers, semiconductor vendors, IP and software providers, system integrators, tool vendors and research organizations. Moreover, OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers can use the document to communicate common technical requirements,” says Bart Placklé, Senior Vice President automotive at imec. “It specifies what interoperable automotive chiplets need to support, without prescribing how individual vendors should implement those capabilities.”

“Having such a common and open framework creates new opportunities for innovation across the value chain, allowing companies to focus on differentiated technologies while developing them within a shared interoperability framework,” he adds.

Bringing together two leading automotive and semiconductor ecosystems around a shared set of requirements

“The automotive industry depends on highly interconnected, global supply chains, which makes alignment across regions and organizations essential,” adds Nobuaki Kawahara, Executive Director, ASRA. “By bringing together Japan’s and Europe’s automotive and semiconductor ecosystems around a shared set of requirements, ACIR is helping build a global automotive chiplet ecosystem in which SoCs from different vendors can seamlessly interoperate. This gives companies greater confidence that the technologies they develop today can be integrated into future multi-vendor systems and adopted at scale.”

The ACIR document’s release comes less than a year after imec and ASRA announcing their strategic alignment on automotive chiplet architectures, with imec’s Automotive Chiplet Program (ACP) having since evolved into the broader Autonomous Edge Chiplet Program (AECP).

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