ARM and GlobalFoundries establish strategic partnership to enable application-optimized SoC products on 28nm HKMG process

CAMBRIDGE, UK: ARM and GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced a long-term strategic relationship to provide their mutual customers with an innovative SoC enablement program.

To support the long-term relationship, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM have signed a broad agreement on processor implementation and circuit optimization to provide mutual customers with a robust enablement program geared towards next-generation applications.

The SoC enablement program, built around a full suite of ARM Physical IP, Fabric IP and Processor IP will deliver customers unparalleled design flexibility on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ most advanced HKMG semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.

The collaborative efforts of the partnership will initially focus on enabling SoC products which use the low-power and high-performance ARM Cortex-A9 processor on GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm HKMG process. The characteristics of GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm "Gate First" HKMG technology is optimized for high-performance processing with minimal leakage making it an ideal choice for advanced mobile solutions.

"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," said Warren East, chief executive officer, ARM. "This collaboration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES and their commitment to delivering leading-edge technology makes them an ideal partner to accelerate the adoption of ARM processor-based technology at 28nm."

"This relationship further advances our strong focus to partner with industry leaders in processor design to deliver manufacturing and technology excellence at the leading edge," said Doug Grose, chief executive officer, GLOBALFOUNDRIES.

"This highly complementary partnership leverages ARM's architectural leadership along with GLOBALFOUNDRIES advanced technology to enable the deployment of 28nm SoC designs with exceptional performance for next-generation consumer devices."