What about TSMC?
We couldn't help noticing, however, that the world's biggest semiconductor foundry - TSMC - was conspicuously absent from this ARM initiative, and not for the first time. "We've been working with TSMC for some time and this specific release happens to concern the Common Platform," said Heinlein.
But there are other reasons why ARM might feel closer to the Common Platform, notwithstanding TSMC's decision to cosy-up to Intel last year. It's generally accepted within the low-power chip world that 28nm, rather than 32nm will be the killer node for SoCs. This is the node that GlobalFoundries especially is focusing its efforts on and, a year or two down the line, should be where most of the SoC action is.
"The industry at large expects that 28nm is going to be the key node for SoCs and that most manufacturing will be done at 28nm," said Heinlein, explaining that one of the benefits of this new design solution is that it enables chip companies to design a 32nm chip and then move that design to 28nm with minimal hassle. "This enables customers to start on 32nm and move to 28nm very easily."
It's no coincidence that GlobalFoundries announced its own initiative to facilitate SoC design and manufacture last week. "GlobalSolutions is something of an extension of what you see here," said Heinlein. And let's not forget, it was only a couple of weeks ago that ARM launched a new company - in partnership with IBM and Samsung, among others - devoted to developing Linux for SoCs.
Also late last week, Samsung announced that its foundry business has qualified the 32nm HKMG low-power process, and is now ready to accept customer designs and begin volume manufacturing. Samsung claims this offers double the logic density of 45nm processes, and it was done in partnership with the IBM alliance.
"Congratulations to Samsung on being the first foundry to demonstrate SoCs using high-k/metal gate technology. This important milestone represents the culmination of collaboration by the IBM technology development alliance to deliver the competitive, low power' gate first' high-k technology - ideal for the emerging next-generation mobile applications," said Gary Patton, VP for IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center.
ARM is doing everything in its power to ensure it remains the default for low-power chip designs as Intel looks to muscle-in on its patch. While ARM will outwardly continue to insist it's completely foundry-agnostic, it's hard not to conclude from this latest announcement that it's much closer to the Common Platform than it is TSMC.
