ARM Extends 28nm IP Leadership With Latest UMC 28HPC POPs

Cambridge, UK -- Feb. 4, 2016 – ARM has announced the immediate availability of the ARM^® Artisan^® physical IP platform and ARM POP™ IP for United Microelectronics Corporation's UMC 28HPCU, an enhanced 28nm process technology.

This extends ARM's 28nm IP leadership, giving the ARM ecosystem the broadest availability for 28nm foundation IP across all of the major foundries. The comprehensive platform includes standard cell libraries and memory compilers and POP technology for the ARM Cortex^®-A53 processor, one of the industry's most widely-adopted 64-bit cores, and ARM Cortex-A7, the highly energy-efficient core which has powered more than a billion smartphones.

"The 28nm process node technology continues to be viewed as the right solution for an increasing number of power-constrained applications," said Will Abbey, general manager, physical design group, ARM. "Together, UMC and ARM are delivering a comprehensive 28nm platform including POP IP for two of the most successful ARM processor cores. This will enable optimized SoC implementations to keep pace with innovations in mobile, IoT and embedded markets."

The wide adoption of ARM foundation 28nm IP delivers consistent logic architecture across all leading foundries and enables greater flexibility for multi-sourcing. The benefits enable current and new SoC designs on 28nm to quickly meet the needs of billions of connected devices. By utilizing POP IP at UMC 28HPCU, UMC customers will be able to respond faster as market demands change and new opportunities emerge.

UMC is capitalizing on the long-node characteristics of 28nm as an increasing number of applications take advantage of its favorable cost and performance benefits. UMC 28HPCU is the foundry's second-generation High-K/Metal Gate (HKMG) 28nm process, which exhibits power and performance improvements relative to UMC's volume production 28HPM technology. Using tighter process control and SPICE models, UMC 28HPCU reduces power consumption and area at any given performance threshold.

"As one of the world's only foundries capable of 28nm gate-last HKMG production, UMC is well-positioned to capitalize on our 28nm experience to bring 28HPCU into high volume manufacturing," said S.C. Chien, vice president, corporate marketing, UMC. "Multiple customers from a variety of applications have engaged with UMC to design their products on 28HPCU. Our collaboration with long-time partner ARM enables UMC to offer a comprehensive design platform with POP IP for two of the most efficient ARM processor cores."

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