AMD to Bring UCIe Connectivity to Select AMD Versal Adaptive SoCs

What’s the News?
AMD will offer the first Versal adaptive SoCs with native support for Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) 1.1 interfaces, enabling low-power, high-bandwidth communication between co-packaged AMD adaptive SoCs and specialized chiplets.Why It Matters?
As designers seek greater flexibility, higher performance and faster development cycles, monolithic devices are giving way to modular chiplet-based systems built from specialized silicon components in a single package. UCIe, an open industry standard, allows system designers to combine specialized silicon in a single package instead of redesigning large monolithic SoCs or developing a new SoC for every application. This approach can reduce latency, power,size, development cost and complexity while accelerating time to market and giving designers greater flexibility to reuse proven silicon IP.

What’s the Role of AMD?
“The semiconductor industry is entering a new era where innovation is increasingly driven by chiplet architectures that combine specialized chiplets to meet specific use cases. AMD Versal RF Series chiplets are uniquely positioned to be the starting point to harness UCIe connectivity, bringing heterogeneous compute architecture with up to 80 TOPS of DSP compute, integrated RF converters and SWAP-C benefits to customers and unlocking the next generation of adaptive RF systems,” said Kirk Saban, corporate VP, product, software and solutions, Embedded, AMD.

What Do Versal RF Devices Support?
AMD Versal RF Series devices will be the first Versal adaptive SoCs to enable UCIe 1.1 connectivity. They will support up to four independent UCIe-SP (standard-package) interfaces and up to two UCIe-AP (advanced-package) interfaces, providing multi-terabit per second aggregate in-package bandwidth. Additional AMD adaptive SoCs with UCIe support will be added as the market matures.

Envisioned applications with commercial or custom UCIe chiplets: RF AFEs, AI, specialized compute, CPO / fiber.

What Makes Versal RF Series Devices Unique?
Versal RF Series adaptive SoCs integrate high-resolution RF data converters, dedicated hard intellectual property (IP) for DSP, AI Engines and programmable logic in a single-chip device. They offer up to 80 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of heterogeneous DSP compute and significant SWAP-C (size, weight, power and cost) benefits by combining the functionality of six devices into a single package.

Adding UCIe connectivity will expand these capabilities significantly by allowing Versal RF Series chiplets to communicate directly with co-packaged chiplets optimized for specific workloads, such as:

Third-party RF AFEs or data converters
AI acceleration chiplets
CPUs
GPU specialized compute
Custom security engines
Communications processors
Application-specific ASICs

What Changes with Chiplets?
Chiplets move specialized functions closer together. Historically, integrating RF front ends, AI accelerators, optical interfaces, memory subsystems or custom ASICs required board-level connections that can add latency, power consumption, size and design complexity. UCIe provides a standardized in-package interconnect, enabling efficient communication between heterogeneous chiplets, including silicon from different vendors.

Benefits of UCIe will enable customers to build customized systems leveraging existing, proven chiplets, eliminating time and helping lower the cost to redesign large monolithic SoCs. These benefits include:

High-bandwidth chiplet-to-chiplet communication
Reduced latency and improved power efficiency compared to AMD devices with board-level GTM2 serialized interfaces
Reuse of proven silicon IP
Potential for lower development costs
Faster time to market
Design flexibility through chiplet integration

What’s Next?
The introduction of UCIe connectivity for select Versal RF Series adaptive SoCs transforms the device into a scalable chiplet platform capable of serving a broad range of next-generation RF, AI, networking and communications applications and enables SWAP-C reduction.

Production chiplets are expected to be available with select Versal RF Series devices in the fourth quarter of 2027.