The two companies will work for faster development of 20nm ARM Cortex A CPUs

Aug 13, 2012 14:01 GMT  ·  By

ARM seems dead set on catching up with Intel and even surpass the technological manufacturing advantage that the world’s largest semiconductor company currently has. Most of Intel’s fastest processors available today are built on the company’s advanced 22nm FinFET manufacturing tech.

ARM’s most advanced CPUs are built on 28nm technology from TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC and 32nm tech from Korean giant Samsung.

It is quite clear that, from a manufacturing point of view, Intel has the upper hand and ARM, despite having the particular advantage of being a fabless company, still hasn’t managed to get its technology through 22nm FABs.

Therefore, ARM and GlobalFoundries will work together on developing chips, manufacturing guidelines and IP for 20nm Cortex A processors such that ARM’s licensees will be able to bring their ARM designs to the market faster.

The British fabless CPU design company is the world’s most influential fabless chip designer although not the largest fabless processor company. That seat is reserved for the American company Qualcomm.

ARM plans on skipping 22nm altogether and going straight for 20nm FinFET manufacturing. The chosen partner for this development is ATIC’s GlobalFoundries and the main FAB where the research will take place is the latter’s Malta, New York FAB that will be the company’s most advanced and largest FAB.

It’s quite strange that GlobalFoundries is also working on further developing its FD-SOI technology, but ARM doesn’t seem to be interested in that.

SOI technology allows CPUs built in a certain manufacturing node to reach higher frequencies while having less leakage current.

The thing is SOI is mainly a second step technology and it is strongly dependent on the wafers being used.

Usually, a FAB and a chip designer must design the chip for that certain node and that certain design type (FinFET in our case) and only after that would they adapt the technology for SOI wafers and further frequency and leakage improvements.

If GlobalFoundries and ARM are successful, we might see 20nm FinFET ARM Cortex A processors before Intel manages to get its 14nm manufacturing lines online.

The same foundry was the one that taped out the world’s first 20nm ARM Cortex A9 processor back in December 2011, so the technology is only supposed to evolve towards FinFET and standardization so that it could be used as a basis for general manufacturing guideline for ARM IP licensees.

The British company is also working with TSMC on FinFET chips, but it seems GlobalFoundries has the technological edge.

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