It’s one of the great mysteries of the technology sector that ARM chipsets can be found in everything from microwaves and trainers to smartbooks and smartphones, yet the brand remains largely out of public consciousness. This looks set to change…
Today the 20 year old British company has announced a broad long-term manufacturing agreement with TSMC, the world’s largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry. The deal means ARM will now have the resources to perform far higher levels of testing and optimization upon its designs before it ships them out to licensees such as Apple, Samsung, Sharp, LG, Texas Instruments, Marvell and Qualcomm.
“The signing of this agreement is a significant semiconductor industry milestone because it formalizes a forward looking, long-term relationship between two of the industry’s leading companies,” explained ARM processor division executive vice president and general manager Mike Inglis. “I am pleased that ARM and TSMC will be working together to enable ARM processor based SoCs leveraging both companies’ advanced technologies.”
“The combination of ARM’s industry leading IP and TSMC’s world-class technology and manufacturing provides our mutual customers with compelling benefits for advanced semiconductor applications,” added TSMC Vice President of Design and Technology Platform and Deputy Head of R&D Dr. Fu-Chieh Hsu.
Yes, those are the formalities out of the way, but where things get really interesting is that ARM also will use TSMC’s fabrication know-how to push its designs all the way down to a futuristic 20-nm process. With each die-shrink comes reduced manufacturing costs and lower power requirements as well as greater performance, meaning this is nothing but good news for the consumer, as ever greater battery life and performance are required by today’s smartphones.
Furthermore, with Intel’s 45-nm fabricated Atom Z6xx chips seen as the route for it to finally enter the smartphone sector, ARM’s agreement has the potential to firmly turn the pressure back on x86 architecture. In fact, it could even be the launch pad for more aggressive moves by ARM into the netbook and laptop sectors.
What remains less clear is how the TSMC agreement will affect the similar deal ARM put in place with GlobalFoundries in October last year. At the time, ARM CEO Warren East said: “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..”
This is almost identical to the role that will be played by TSMC, though the restriction of the GlobalFoundries deal up to 28-nm fabrication suggests TSMC will be its major partner long term. All is fair in love and war, etc, etc.
“Today’s announcement between ARM and TSMC is so important to the future of mobile and other consumer devices,” proclaimed ARM vice president of marketing John Heinlein on his blog, and while rhetoric is an unavoidable part of covering this sector, he may well have hit the nail on the head.
Gordon
