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ARM and GlobalFoundries announce strategic partnership

by Scott Bicheno on 6 October 2009, 04:30

Tags: ARM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES

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Armed to the teeth

Last week we reported on GlobalFoundries shouting about its claimed 28nm chip manufacturing process leadership and concluded the intended recipient of all this corporate chest beating was UK chip designer ARM.

Well it looks like we were barking up the right tree, because ARM and GlobalFoundries have just announced a long-term strategic relationship to provide an "SoC enablement program" for the ARM ecosystem.

Essentially, this is an agreement between the companies to optimize the design and manufacturing experience for ARM licensees, should they choose GlobalFoundries to manufacture their SoCs (system on chip), which promise to increasingly be the brains of our mobile computing devices. The focus is on ARM's Cortex A9 processor design and GlobalFoundries' 28nm HKMG process.

"This announcement reflects our business value and strategy of providing best in class processor implementation by marrying our own processor and physical IP with world class manufacturing semiconductor technology," said Warren East, ARM CEO. 

"This collaboration with GlobalFoundries and their commitment to delivering leading edge technology makes them an ideal partner to accelerate the adoption of ARM processor based technology at 28nm." 

Doug Grose, GlobalFoundries CEO, added: "This relationship further advances our strong focus to partner with industry leaders in processor design to deliver manufacturing and technology excellence at the leading edge.

"This highly complementary partnership leverages ARM's architectural leadership along with GlobalFoundries advanced technology to enable the deployment of 28nm SoC designs with exceptional performance for next-generation consumer devices."