Arm awarded TSMC Partner of the Year award for Processor IP

By: Kelvin Low, vice president of marketing, Physical Design Group, Arm

October 03, 2018 -- Yesterday, the 2018 TSMC Open Innovation Platform® (OIP) Ecosystem Forum gathered in Santa Clara, CA, for a series of engaging discussions on putting TSMC technology to work for ongoing and future semiconductor designs. As an active player in the ecosystem, Arm is honored to receive TSMC’s Partner of the Year Award for Processor IP. This marks the fifth consecutive year that Arm has received this award for its best in class Processor IP, and the eighth consecutive year to be named an OIP Partner of the Year.

Arm’s collaboration with TSMC goes back many years. Together, we have pushed the bounds of what is possible. In 2011, the year of Arm’s first TSMC Partner Award, Arm and TSMC announced the first 20nm Arm Cortex-A15 multicore processor tapeout. Last year, together with Xilinx and Cadence, we produced the world’s first CCIX silicon demonstration vehicle in 7nm FinFET technology. Multicore compute has come a long way since 2011 with big.LITTLE and DynamIQ technology leading the charge for multicore integration. The advanced technology from TSMC continues to expand to ever smaller nodes, now taking us beyond FinFETs to transistors of the future. Looking at just these two collaborations, we saw nearly a 3x (linear) shrink in six years with successful outcomes, which is a true testament to the ecosystem at work.

For ecosystem partners looking to leverage the design experience, like those mentioned in the above collaborations specific to Arm’s Cortex-A cores and Arm Artisan Physical IP on TSMC processes, Arm offers POP IP across TSMC process nodes to:

• reduce risk in designs,
• accelerate time to market, and
• provide predictable power, performance, and design flexibility.

That said, it’s not all about processors, nor is it all about the most advanced nodes. TSMC continues to grow its portfolio beyond Moore’s Law to ensure all application segments are addressed. This year TSMC announced the addition of two 22nm processes, 22ULL and 22ULP. This means Arm and TSMC are offering Artisan physical IP and two optimized TSMC processes for designs spanning mobile and consumer applications to IoT and AI market segments. Just as the TSMC technology covers a broad space, so does the Artisan physical IP and full Arm platform for the 22nm processes, including:

• Foundry-sponsored memory compilers
• Logic and General Purpose I/O libraries
• POP IP for Cortex-A73 and Cortex-A53
• Implementation solutions to benefit ecosystem partners

You can find all the details about these new 22nm processes in our new blog.

The Partner of the Year award reflects another year of strong collaborations with TSMC, and we look forward to continuing that into 2019. Together we can address new challenges for maximizing efficiency and pushing performance across existing and new market segments. We hope you were able to join one of the TSMC Open Innovation Events this year, and we look forward to seeing you at Arm TechCon or one of the Arm Technology Symposiums in various cities this fall.

About Arm

Arm technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Our advanced, energy-efficient processor designs have enabled the intelligent computing in more than 125 billion chips. Over 70% of the world’s population are using Arm technology, which is securely powering products from the sensor to the smartphone to the supercomputer. This technology combined with our IoT software and device management platform enable customers to derive real business value from their connected devices. Together with our 1,000+ technology partners we are at the forefront of designing, securing and managing all areas of compute from the chip to the cloud.