Marvell’s 2nm IP Platform Allows Customized Silicon for Datacenters
Marvell this week launched its new IP expertise platform particularly tailor-made for customized chips for accelerated infrastructure made on TSMC’s 2nm-class course of applied sciences (presumably together with N2 and N2P). The platform consists of applied sciences important for growing cloud-optimized accelerators, Ethernet switches, and digital sign processors.
“The 2nm platform will allow Marvell to ship extremely differentiated analog, mixed-signal, and foundational IP to construct accelerated infrastructure,” mentioned Sandeep Bharathi, chief growth officer at Marvell. “Our partnership with TSMC on our 5nm, 3nm and now 2nm platforms has been instrumental in serving to Marvell increase the boundaries of what may be achieved in silicon.“
The 2nm platform is constructed on Marvell’s intensive IP portfolio, which incorporates superior SerDes able to speeds past 200 Gbps, processor subsystems, encryption engines, SoC materials, and high-bandwidth bodily layer interfaces. These IPs are essential for growing and producing a variety of gadgets, corresponding to customized compute accelerators and optical interconnect digital sign processors. These have gotten frequent constructing blocks for AI clusters, cloud information facilities, and different infrastructures supporting machines used for AI and HPC workloads.
Whereas these IPs are important for quite a lot of processors, DSPs, and networking gear, growing them from scratch—particularly for TSMC’s 2nm-class course of applied sciences that depend on gate-all-around Nanosheet transistors—is difficult, time-consuming, and typically inefficient, each from a die house and economics perspective. That is the place Marvell’s IP portfolio guarantees to be very helpful.
Marvell doesn’t outright say that its TSMC 2nm-certified platform is silicon-proven, however given the truth that TSMC has been working with IP providers over N2-compatible IPs for fairly a while, it’s affordable to anticipate that at the very least a few of Marvell’s fashionable IPs are.
“We take a modular strategy to semiconductor design R&D, focusing first on qualifying foundational analog, mixed-signal IP and superior packaging that can be utilized throughout a broad spectrum of gadgets,” Bharathi mentioned. “This enables us to deliver improvements corresponding to course of manufacturing advances quicker to market.“
In the meantime, Marvell just isn’t a part of TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform and OIP’s IP Alliance, so it’s unclear whether the company’s N2-compatible IPs will be part of TSMC’s TSMC9000 IP program, which drastically simplifies IP selections for chip designers.
“TSMC is happy to collaborate with Marvell in pioneering a platform for advancing accelerated infrastructure on our 2nm course of expertise,” mentioned Kevin Zhang, senior vice chairman of enterprise growth at TSMC. “We’re trying ahead to our continued collaboration with Marvell within the growth of modern connectivity and compute merchandise using TSMC’s best-in-class course of and packaging applied sciences.“
Supply: Marvell
