chiplet
chiplet
A future semiconductor technology from Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a subsidiary of Xerox, that ties together minuscule circuits no larger than a grain of sand to make microprocessors, memory and other electronic components. Introduced in 2013, PARC's "Xerographic micro-assembly" cuts a wafer into tens of thousands of chiplets rather than hundreds of chips as in the traditional semiconductor process. The chiplets can be wrapped around flexible surfaces and may even become the "ink" in 3D printing.More than a decade ago, Alien Technologies developed a similar technology. The tiny chips in Alien's Fluid Self Assembly (FSA) were named "Nanoblocks." The patented Fluid Self Assembly is waiting in the wings for the time it becomes commercially viable. See 3D printing, chip, wafer and PARC.