GlobalFoundries partners up with ARM

[MODEL3]

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/17706

AMD and Intel may share dominion over the x86 microprocessor market, but in the mobile and embedded world, ARM rules. That makes GlobalFoundries' new alliance with the British intellectual property firm quite a major event. GlobalFoundries and ARM Holdings say they have signed "a broad agreement on processor implementation and circuit optimization to provide mutual customers with a robust enablement program geared towards next-generation applications." In less corporate terms, GlobalFoundries and ARM plan to collaborate on the manufacturing of system-on-a-chip devices with Cortex A9 processor cores using 28-nm high-k metal gate process technology.

Last we heard, GlobalFoundries intended to start accepting 28-nm HKMG designs in the second half of next year and to begin production at its Dresden facility "shortly thereafter." The two firms claim that process is ideal for "advanced mobile solutions" because it's designed for both high performance and minimal current leakage.

According to the official announcement, though, this partnership is a long-term one "built around a full suite of ARM Physical IP, Fabric IP and Processor IP," so it may span other products or multiple generations of process technology. The deal could benefit both GlobalFoundries, considering the popularity of ARM-based chips, and ARM itself, since GlobalFoundries gives it access to pretty advanced process technologies?including the same ones AMD uses to compete with Intel.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/m...nd_Mobile_Phones.html#

Perhaps, Globalfoundries is about to obtain a yet another high-profile customer, whose chip designs power the vast majority of mobile phones sold worldwide.

ARM, a leading developer of low-power microprocessor technologies, this week confirmed that it was interested in making its chips at Globalfoundries, a joint venture between Advanced Micro Devices and Advanced Technology Investment Company. The designer hopes to expand beyond its traditional mobile phone market and needs leading edge manufacturing to ensure that its complex designs will be economically and technically feasible to manufacture.

ARM plans to add manufacturing partners as it expands its businesses beyond mobile phones, Kevin Smith, ARM?s vice president of marketing, told this week Bloomberg news-agency. The executive indicated that at present ARM is working with Freescale Semiconductor, Sharp Corp. and Pegatron Technology Corp on smartbooks, low-cost netbooks utilizing ARM designs.

Since ARM is already working with Globalfoundries? process technology partner IBM, there should not be a lot of problems for the company to develop chips in accordance with Globalfoundries? design rules.

 

[yh125d]

This..... looks promising

 

[Xcobra]

Interesting, indeed.

 

[drizek]

I would go for Awesome.

Match made in heaven type thing I think, and great for everybody involved. AMD is scerred of Intels continuing shrinkageization of Atom, as is ARM. Intel would be using far superior manufacturing technology to eat ARMs cake just as soon as the smartphone market was heating up. Now ARM will be shipping 28nm A9s just a few months after Intel ships 32nm Atom. With the more efficient architecture and performance approaching desktop levels, ARM can probably own hte (linux) netbook market, as well as allow for far superior phones.

" ARM states that a single core (excluding caches) occupies less than 1.5 mm2 when designed in a TSMC 65 nanometer (nm) generic process.[2], can be clocked at speeds over 1GHz and consumes less than 250mW per core [1]."

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is it possible to build an x86-compatible PC, with an ARM at its core, perhaps with some sort of low-level translation software, ala Transmeta?

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: drizek
I would go for Awesome.

Match made in heaven type thing I think, and great for everybody involved. AMD is scerred of Intels continuing shrinkageization of Atom, as is ARM. Intel would be using far superior manufacturing technology to eat ARMs cake just as soon as the smartphone market was heating up. Now ARM will be shipping 28nm A9s just a few months after Intel ships 32nm Atom. With the more efficient architecture and performance approaching desktop levels, ARM can probably own hte (linux) netbook market, as well as allow for far superior phones.

" ARM states that a single core (excluding caches) occupies less than 1.5 mm2 when designed in a TSMC 65 nanometer (nm) generic process.[2], can be clocked at speeds over 1GHz and consumes less than 250mW per core [1]."

Wow, those numbers are quite impressive if true. And at only 65nm? By my math, the same core at 28nm would only be .25mm^2/core

 

[drizek]

I'm more interested in having 1.2ghz quad cores that use less than 1W.

 

[Phynaz]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Is it possible to build an x86-compatible PC, with an ARM at its core, perhaps with some sort of low-level translation software, ala Transmeta?

Yeah, but it would run slower than you can believe.

 

[schenley101]

what actually is the point of this deal? ARM has nothing to do with fabication. they don't even design chips. they just design and sell IPs for companies such as TI, Samsung Etc to use in SoCs

 

[Rezist]

Yeah you'd think the deal would be between Cortex and GF?

 

[yh125d]

Cortex is an ARM design, no?



What makes you think ARM doesn't design their chips? :\

 

[schenley101]

ARM designs the "Blueprint" for a core, not a physical chip. when you design a SoC, arm core is a building block you put on your chip, such a nvidia did with tergra, qualcomm withe snapdragon, etc.

at my internship last year we were working on a design for radar processing, we used an arm11 core for part of it. the core was just a verilog file.

 

[MODEL3]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/o...ower_Consumption.html#

ARM: SOI Process Technology Provides 40% Reduction in Power Consumption

ARM, a leading developer of low-power microprocessor technologies, said that the results from a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) 45nm test chip that demonstrate potential power savings of up to 40% over traditional bulk process for manufacturing chips. Usage of SOI process technologies will allow ARM to further reduce power usage of its chips without sacrificing their performance or, otherwise, boost performance without increases of power consumption.
...
ARM and Soitec collaborated to produce a test chip to demonstrate the power savings in a real silicon implementation with a well-known, industry-standard core. The goal was to produce a comparison of 45nm SOI high-performance technology with bulk CMOS 45nm low-power (LP) technology of the same product.