With the rapid growth of cloud computing, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence, enterprise demand for advanced computing power is soaring. At the same time, the technical challenges and costs of semiconductor design and manufacturing continue to rise, fueling interest in chiplet architectures.
For years, SoC manufacturers such as Intel and AMD have been refining chiplet technology — integrating smaller, reusable chips into modular architectures to boost efficiency, flexibility, and customization. Traditionally, these chiplet-based solutions relied on proprietary interconnect technologies for chip-to-chip communication.
To overcome these limitations, the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) Consortium was formed in 2022. Founding members included semiconductor leaders like Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and TSMC, alongside hyperscale computing giants such as Google Cloud, Meta, and Microsoft. Their mission: develop a standardized chip interconnect protocol that allows chips from different vendors, fabs, and functional domains to integrate seamlessly in a single package — enhancing system flexibility, efficiency, and customization. That same year, the UCIe 1.0 specification was released.
UCIe 3.0: Major Performance and Efficiency Gains #
The consortium — now with over 140 members — has officially released UCIe 3.0, delivering significant upgrades in power efficiency, management features, and backward compatibility. The headline improvement is performance:
- Data rates up to 48 GT/s and 64 GT/s, doubling the 32 GT/s of UCIe 2.0 (launched in 2024).
This leap addresses what the consortium calls the “insatiable demand” for bandwidth, especially in AI, HPC, and data analytics, where physical constraints limit inter-chip connections.
“You need to deliver more bandwidth in the same space, but chip sizes don’t grow just because you need more throughput,” said Debendra Das Sharma, Intel Senior Fellow and UCIe Consortium Chairman. “That’s why we pushed the data rate higher.”
Coverage Across Packaging Types #
The doubled data rate applies to both:
- UCIe-S (2D standard packaging)
- UCIe-A (2.5D advanced packaging)
No changes were made to 3D designs, which already achieve extremely high bandwidth thanks to micro-bump technology — hundreds of terabytes per mm² — exceeding current needs. Das Sharma noted that 2D and 2.5D designs are the ones that require higher bandwidth in fixed space.
Backward Compatibility Preserved #
A key design goal for UCIe 3.0 was seamless backward compatibility. As the consortium emphasized in its white paper:
“This ensures that existing systems can integrate the new standard without disruption, enabling smooth upgrades and continued interoperability with older generations.”
Broad Industry Impact #
Das Sharma compared UCIe’s role to that of PCIe at the board level — spanning use cases from handheld devices to massive data centers.
- UCIe-A is ideal for high-end chiplets like AI accelerators.
- UCIe-S serves devices that don’t need such extreme bandwidth.
The goal is a continuous standard that spans the full computing spectrum, covering:
- Digital signal processors
- Wireless infrastructure
- Radar systems
- AI, HPC, and large-scale data centers
“UCIe is everywhere,” Das Sharma said. “Our vision is to unify the industry under a single interconnect standard that supports every major computing domain.”