Wafer-scale integration (WSI) bypasses the traditional step of dicing a wafer into individual chips. Instead, the entire wafer is packaged as one enormous processor or memory array. This allows for unprecedented bandwidth and low latency between processing cores, but it requires extensive redundancy to route around the inevitable manufacturing defects that occur across such a large silicon area.
They're using wafer-scale integration for the new AI training cluster to eliminate the bottleneck of off-chip memory transfers.
Also heard as
- WSI
Do not mix it up with
- VLSI: VLSI refers to packing millions of transistors into a standard-sized chip, while WSI makes the chip the size of the entire silicon wafer.
Related terms
WSI
Wafer-scale integration is the process of building a single massive integrated circuit that spans an entire silicon wafer.
VLSI
Very large-scale integration is the process of creating an integrated circuit by combining thousands to millions of transistors onto a single chip.
Wafer
A highly polished slice of semiconductor material used as the foundation for fabricating integrated circuits.
Chiplet
A smaller, modular integrated circuit die designed to be combined with others in a single package.