Chipproducent GlobalFoundries and-up chip designer ARM have entered into an agreement to work together system-on-a-chip, or soc, to develop on the basis of the ARM architecture. The soc’s would be on 20nm should be produced.
The new soc would be in GlobalFoundries’ factory in New York produced must be, at the end of this year with sample-production started will be, but volume production until the beginning of 2013 will start. The ARM-soc’s will in the first instatie on a 20nm process to be used, in which the transistors will consist of so-called finfet. These transistors are as trigate transistors by Intel use the 22nm process of Ivy Bridge processors and have a ‘three-dimensional’ structure.
The finfet’s have a ‘vin’ that when the gate must be and generally have lower leakage currents and are more economical than normal transistors. The ARM-soc with 20nm finfet transistors to be made, would be not only more economical, but also up to forty percent better performance than current 28nm-soc. The first testchips on 20nm were in the summer of 2011 is already shown. In the future, the soc not only on 20nm, but also according to a 14nm process to be used.
According to the agreement, ARM will have the necessary designs for the soc’s provide, that a complete library will be available to allow soc’s to put together. The library covers alongside Cortex-A cores the Mali-gpu. GlobalFoundries delivers in addition to the production testing and validation of the design. With the preparation for 20nm and 14nm-soc, GlobalFoundries soc on 65nm, 55nm, 28nm and the future 20nm and 14nm are produced.
