Semiconductor Engineering Vocabulary

Recommended General Sources

WikiChip

Semiconductor Engineering - Deep Insights For Chip Engineers

chip, wafer, die, mask

Chips, wafers, dies, masks, and photolithography

chip vs. die

sometimes used interchangeably, else chip would specifically refer to packaged dies;

a die/chip is a tesselated pattern on the wafer, which sets the foundation for economics of scale for the semiconductor manufactoring industry.

chiplet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiplet

A chiplet[1][2][3][4] is a tiny integrated circuit (IC) that contains a well-defined subset of functionality. It is designed to be combined with other chiplets on an interposer in a single package.

What Is a Chiplet?

Chiplets are one solution to this issue. Semiconductor manufacturing is notoriously difficult, with processors traditionally manufactured on a single piece of silicon known as “monolithic” designs. Small defects lead to chips being downgraded and sold with fewer cores or even discarded entirely.

When a single chiplet is defective, it can be replaced with another, resulting in less waste than discarding or downgrading a much larger chip. This increases yields since chip manufacturers can place multiple chiplets into a single processor to make up the desired core count.

for a more detailed explanation and proof of the increase in yield, see

Chiplet - WikiChip

Example

Consider a D0 of 0.1 defects per cm². Now, consider a medium-sized die 18 mm x 20 mm (360 mm²). On a standard 300-millimiter wafer size, up to 150 dies can be fabricated.

 Splitting up the same die into four chiplets - 9.5 mm x 10.5 mm (~99 mm²) results in 622 dies instead.

Below is a plot of percent of yield per wafer for a die of various sizes versus the same die consisting of two, three, and four chiplets. Note that an additional 10% overhead for the cross-die communication has been added to the chiplet-based design.

From the graph above, it can be seen that a 360 mm² monolithic die will have an yield of 15% while a 4-chiplet design (each 99 mm²) more than doubles the yield to 37%. The total die area of the 4-chiplet design incurs a ~10% area penalty (36 mm² for a combined silicon area of 396 mm²) but the significant improvement in yield which directly translates to lower cost more than justifies this.

Integrated Circuits (ICs), processors and cores

ICs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. 

==> this confusion propagated into the Chinese vocabulary as manifested in the word "芯片"

Integrated circuit is the overall umbrella term; everything people work on in the industry can be said to be "producing integrated circuits".

(micro-) processors

https://semiengineering.com/knowledge_centers/integrated-circuit/ic-types/processors/

Processor is a generic term referring to logic circuitry on an integrated circuit that processes instructions and data in a computer. The processor takes in instructions and data and performs operations on the data as defined by the instructions, calculating an output that is used to either control the computer or device or complete a specific task. In the early days of computing, the processor was made up of vacuum tubes, relays and room-sized equipment, followed by transistors on circuit boards and early integrated circuits. When the microprocessor—an integrated circuit (IC) on a silicon substrate, colloquially called a chip—came into being in the 1970s, the processor on a dedicated IC was called a microprocessor. A processor can also be in the form of an intellectual property (IP) core, added to an IC.

Differences Between an Integrated Circuit and a Microprocessor - Total Phase Blog

So, is a microprocessor an integrated circuit? The answer is yes, and it is considered to be one of the most complex of its kind. A microprocessor is a computer processor that incorporates the functions of a central processing unit (CPU) on a single integrated circuit, or a single chip. It is used in a computer system to execute logical and computational tasks so other external circuits, including memory or peripheral ICs, can perform their intended functions.

cores

cpu - Difference between core and processor - Stack Overflow

A core is usually the basic computation unit of the CPU - it can run a single program context (or multiple ones if it supports hardware threads such as hyperthreading on Intel CPUs), maintaining the correct program state, registers, and correct execution order, and performing the operations through ALUs. For optimization purposes, a core can also hold on-core caches with copies of frequently used memory chunks. ==> while the processor/CPU would hold some shared caches for inter-core communication.

A CPU may have one or more cores to perform tasks at a given time. These tasks are usually software processes and threads that the OS schedules. Note that the OS may have many threads to run, but the CPU can only run X such tasks at a given time, where X = number cores * number of hardware threads per core. The rest would have to wait for the OS to schedule them whether by preempting currently running tasks or any other means.

In addition to the one or many cores, the CPU will include some interconnect that connects the cores to the outside world, and usually also a large "last-level" shared cache. There are multiple other key elements required to make a CPU work, but their exact locations may differ according to design. You'll need a memory controller to talk to the memory, I/O controllers (display, PCIe, USB, etc..). In the past these elements were outside the CPU, in the complementary "chipset", but most modern design have integrated them into the CPU.

In addition the CPU may have an integrated GPU, and pretty much everything else the designer wanted to keep close for performance, power and manufacturing considerations. CPU design is mostly trending in to what's called system on chip (SoC).

This is a "classic" design, used by most modern general-purpose devices (client PC, servers, and also tablet and smartphones). You can find more elaborate designs, usually in the academy, where the computations is not done in basic "core-like" units.

==> a chiplet may have one or more cores, but the chiplet vs. chip organizational scheme is similar to core vs. CPU

==> core is not, but almost a microprocessor, while modern CPU is a more and more versatile processor.

Core vs Processor | Top 7 Differences You Should Know

The processor is the electronic chip located in the computer which comprises commands to make logic, and arithmetic control and output or input variation whereas the core is the executing unit placed in the processor which receives and follows the instruction. 

==> (at least in popular design,) core does not handle the logistics, such as inter-core communication, task scheduling, disk or even RAM management, hence they cannot be categorized as fully independent microprocessors.

==> but obviously, depending on the scope of the discussion and design quirks, core can be seen as independent processor units, such as most plug-in NPUs.

====> SoC is defined in another dimension, mostly concerned with design pattern, not the hardware scope.