IBM has signed a new agreement with technology designer ARM to extend their collaboration on advanced semiconductor technologies to enable the rapid development of next-gen mobile products that are optimised for performance and power efficiency.
According to IBM, the resulting technology will provide a suite of optimised physical and processor IP by ARM tuned to IBM’s advance manufacturing process down to 14nm.
Through this agreement, ARM and IBM will collaboratively develop design platforms aligning the manufacturing process, microprocessor and physical IP design teams.
IBM said that this collaboration would minimize the risk and barriers to migrating to smaller geometries while enabling optimised density, performance, power and yield in advanced SoC designs; accelerating the introduction of advanced electronics into the marketplace.
IBM Microelectronics general manager Michael Cadigan said they plan to continue working closely with ARM and their foundry customers to speed the momentum of ARM technology by delivering highly advanced, low-power semiconductor technology for a variety of new communications and computing devices.
Past collaborations between IBM and ARM on advanced geometries have been underway since 2008, resulting in the implementation of extensive process and physical IP refinements to improve SoC density, routability, manufacturability, power consumption, and performance.
Moreover, through the previous collaboration on the 32nm and 28nm ARM has already delivered 11 test chips that provide concrete research structures and early silicon validation.
