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Intel and ARM Finally Partner at 10nm?

CharlieD

New member
Just when I thought the ARM story couldn't get more interesting:

Accelerating Foundry Innovation for a Smart and Connected World


By 2020, just four years from now, we expect to see 50 billion connected devices[SUP]1[/SUP] generating more than two zettabytes of data traffic annually[SUP]2[/SUP]. That dramatic growth means increasing opportunities for our foundry business, and, more important, for our customers and partners.


Our Intel Custom Foundry team is helping customers around the world by providing access to Intel’s technology and manufacturing assets through turnkey services including design, wafer manufacturing, packaging and testing. We’re enabling new products and experiences on Intel’s leading-edge technologies with industry standard design kits, silicon-proven IP blocks, and design services spanning from low-power SOCs to high-performance infrastructure devices.


And we’re not done yet. At our Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco today, we shared the latest news about how we’re supporting customers and expanding our capabilities.


Over time, Intel Custom Foundry has developed full-featured design platforms on Intel’s 22 nm, 14 nm and our forthcoming 10 nm FinFET process, offering our customers an unprecedented combination of performance and energy efficiency compared to previous state-of-the-art transistors. Our 10 nm technology will provide improvements in transistor scaling and offer new performance, power and cost benefits as well as a wide range of device features to meet different product requirements.


In addition to expanding design platforms, our EDA and IP ecosystem has also been growing over the past few years, as evidenced by the EDA enablement and certification announcements with partners such as ANSYS, Cadence, Mentor Graphics and Synopsys. Intel has partnered with IP companies such as Cadence and Synopsys for the development of foundational and advanced IP over various technology nodes.


Today, we are furthering these ecosystem efforts with new foundational IP that our customers can use. Our 10 nm design platform for foundry customers will now offer access to ARM® Artisan® physical IP, including POP™ IP, based on the most advanced ARM cores and Cortex series processors. Optimizing this technology for Intel’s 10 nm process means that foundry customers can take advantage of the IP to achieve best-in-class PPA (power, performance, area) for power-efficient, high-performance implementations of their designs for mobile, IoT and other consumer applications.


The ARM Artisan platform includes:

  • High Performance and High Density Logic Libraries
  • Memory Compilers
  • POP IP (for future ARM premium mobile cores)
Having leading IP providers in our portfolio will accelerate ecosystem readiness while providing greater flexibility and time-to-market advantages to our customers.


Building on this work, today at IDF I also shared some exciting success stories from a few of our diverse customers:

  • LG Electronics will produce a world-class mobile platform based on Intel Custom Foundry’s 10 nm design platform. We’re pleased to welcome them as a customer.
  • Spreadtrum is designing on Intel’s 14 nm foundry platform.
  • Achronix Semiconductor is in production on its Intel 22 nm Speedster 22i HD1000 networking silicon.
  • Netronome is in production on its Intel 22 nm networking silicon – NFP-6480.
  • Altera is using our foundry platform to build the first true 14 nm FPGA, which offers
    unprecedented advances in PPA.
These and other customers are working today with Intel Custom Foundry to build the product experiences of tomorrow. I’m proud that our unmatched technological capabilities and services are enabling us to partner with visionary companies to shape a smart and connected world.
Zane Ball is vice president in the Technology and Manufacturing Group and co-general manager of Intel Custom Foundry at Intel Corporation.
 
Here is the news from ARM:

ARM IP and Intel Custom Foundry collaboration: A new era for premium mobile design

Posted by Will Abbey in ARM Processors on Aug 16, 2016 7:57:27 PM Today we have exciting news: ARM and Intel Custom Foundry have announced an agreement to accelerate the development and implementation of ARM SoCs on Intel’s 10nm process. Specifically, we are making ARM’s Artisan[SUP]®[/SUP] Physical IP available on the process as part of an ongoing collaboration.

I’m excited about our collaboration with Intel Custom Foundry for several reasons including:

  • The benefits to our partners by expanding the ARM ecosystem to offer more manufacturing choices for premium mobile and consumer SoCs.
  • Intel Custom Foundry will give its customers access to world-class physical IP and ARM implementation solutions.
  • All the major foundries now offer Artisan platforms, further confirming it as the industry standard for physical IP.
Today’s announcement represents what we expect to be a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership with Intel Custom Foundry.

One of the strengths and differentiators of the Artisan platform is the availability of ARM core-optimized IP—what we call ARM POP™ technology. The value of POP technology for an ARM core on the Intel 10nm process is tremendous, as it will allow for quicker knowledge transfer, enabling customers to lower their risk in implementing the most advanced ARM cores on Intel’s leading-edge process technology. Additionally, POP technology enables silicon partners to accelerate the implementation and tape-outs of their ARM-based designs. The initial POP IP will be for two future advanced ARM Cortex-A processor cores designed for mobile computing applications in either ARM big.LITTLE™ or stand-alone configurations.

Today at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), I had the pleasure of joining Intel Senior Fellow, Mark Bohr and Intel Custom Foundry Vice President Zane Ball’s Technical Insights session to announce our collaboration. We discussed how the partnership will accelerate design enablement for future devices in the premium mobile market including smartphones and tablets. Read more about Zane’s perspective on our collaboration.

Ecosystem enablement
You probably glanced at the headline and thought “ARM and Intel collaborating…what?” Despite press stories, Intel and ARM have worked together for years to help enable the ecosystem, and this is just the latest milestone in that long-standing relationship. I see it as a natural evolution of the design ecosystem: ARM is a leader in processor and physical design, and Intel Custom Foundry is a leading integrated device manufacturer. This combination is a win-win for customers. It reinforces an ARM tenet throughout our 25-year history: To continuously enable choice and innovation inside the ARM ecosystem.

This agreement provides access to another key manufacturing source and expands the EDA and IP ecosystem to ensure interoperability and a shorter on-ramp for early leading-edge process technology.

I’ve enjoyed broad experience in this industry, working in semiconductors, EDA and now IP. I love the relentless competition but I also am wowed by moments of cooperation that redefine the industry landscape. This agreement is one example of that and will deliver immense value to the design ecosystem and ultimately to our partners. ARM is committed to Intel’s success as a world-class custom foundry at 10nm. We stand behind our mutual customers when they make that choice.
 
One more from Korea:

Intel fabs to churn out 10nm ARM chips for LG smartphones next year
2016 is just full of surprises, isn't it?

Intel fabs to churn out 10nm ARM chips for LG smartphones next year • The Register

LG will use the fabs for its next-gen 64-bit ARMv8 mobile SoCs, and Spreadtrum will use the assembly lines for 14nm ARM chips. Achronix Semiconductor is already using the Custom Foundry for 22nm Speedster 22i HD1000 parts, Netronome is having 22nm networking processors NFP-6480 produced, and Intel-owned Altera is using the fabs to churn out 14nm FPGAs.
 
I guess this squashes the Intel and Apple A10 @ 10nm rumors:

Apple A10 chipset revealed: Intel 10nm processors with multi-threading
The upcoming Apple iPhone 7 is expected to ship with Apple A10 processor with six cores manufactured by Intel. When Apple launched the A9 processor, the company claimed that the processor offers 70 percent enhanced performance on the processing side and 90 percent improved performance and ability over the A8.


Hahahahah....... If the ARM foundation IP will not be ready until 2017 I highly doubt that Apple used Intel 10nm for the A10. In fact I would not expect any Intel/ARM 10nm products out until 2018 which will coincide with TSMC 7nm.

You should also know that in order for ARM to do the foundation IP (Standard cells, SRAM, etc...) Intel will have to open the process kimono like never before so we will see how small their transistor really is.
 
Intel to Produce 10nm ARM Chips

It looks like Intel is again trying to break into the foundry business by producing ARM chips at 10nm. They plan to now compete in the foundry business against TSM an others. Does anyone have any opinions or comments on this? Will Intel be able to build the needed relationships for the ecosystem needed to compete with Samsung and TSM in the foundry business? It will be interesting first if this really happens and two the ramifications if it does.



Intel will start producing ARM chips to boost foundry business | TechCrunch
 
It's funny that they mention 22nm foundry business now, when that happened about 4 years ago. This seems to be a new PR drive for their foundry business.
 
I think it's politics at intel. Shifting the responsibility and blame of custom foundry to fab 28 and some misdirection from 10 nm too. We've seen feuds within intel played out in the media before.
 
Hahahahah....... If the ARM foundation IP will not be ready until 2017 I highly doubt that Apple used Intel 10nm for the A10. In fact I would not expect any Intel/ARM 10nm products out until 2018 which will coincide with TSMC 7nm.

You should also know that in order for ARM to do the foundation IP (Standard cells, SRAM, etc...) Intel will have to open the process kimono like never before so we will see how small their transistor really is.

Daniel, just a question. Apple is supposed to use custom ARM cores designed in-house. So do they need the ARM IP in order to produce their processors? Do they use other IP from ARM? e.g. memory controllers or anything? In the past, Intel has used Imagination GPUs in their Atom lines. Is Imagination IP available for Intel foundry?
 
Daniel, just a question. Apple is supposed to use custom ARM cores designed in-house. So do they need the ARM IP in order to produce their processors? Do they use other IP from ARM? e.g. memory controllers or anything? In the past, Intel has used Imagination GPUs in their Atom lines. Is Imagination IP available for Intel foundry?

Yes Apple does license the ARM architecture and create their own CPU cores. Yes Apple used to license ARM foundation IP when they used Samsung as a foundry but not so much anymore. Apple has a very large IP team now and they are bringing most IP in-house including foundation IP. So this announcement has nothing to do with Apple. It's for SoC companies that use off the shelf ARM cores. Mediatek for example but I can assure you they will not use Intel Foundry. The other big opportunity is the Chinese SoC vendors but I doubt they are going to buy wafers from Israel or Ireland when they can get them from the TSMC China fab or Taiwan. SoCs are under serious pricing pressure and I see no way for Intel to compete with TSMC and Samsung on price. Once again Intel is late to the mobile game and is getting fleeced. Just my opinion of course.

It is also interesting to note that ARM IO libraries were not mentioned. Can't do a chip without IOs.
 
It's for SoC companies that use off the shelf ARM cores. Mediatek for example but I can assure you they will not use Intel Foundry. The other big opportunity is the Chinese SoC vendors but I doubt they are going to buy wafers from Israel or Ireland when they can get them from the TSMC China fab or Taiwan. SoCs are under serious pricing pressure and I see no way for Intel to compete with TSMC and Samsung on price. Once again Intel is late to the mobile game and is getting fleeced. Just my opinion of course.

It is also interesting to note that ARM IO libraries were not mentioned. Can't do a chip without IOs.

Is Intel selling IO IP? Could it be part of the whole package? A transfer of Intel designs for clients? Now that Altera is on board I think that they are supposed to develop more generic IO blocks, could they resell them as IP?

I can definitely agree with chinese SoC vendors, but for different reasons (apparently I agree on cost). I think the ban of sales of Intel processors by the US government was a serious blow. I do not believe that a chinese company would be willing to place its bets on a manufacturing partner that could be restricted to export its technology to China.

On the other hand, I tend to believe that this announcement is a preamble to a split of Intel Foundry and Intel (dont know how to call the rest).

By the way, it has been mentioned that LG is designing a SoC for Intel 10nm. Are there any info on that?
 
Is Intel selling IO IP? Could it be part of the whole package? A transfer of Intel designs for clients? Now that Altera is on board I think that they are supposed to develop more generic IO blocks, could they resell them as IP?

I can definitely agree with chinese SoC vendors, but for different reasons (apparently I agree on cost). I think the ban of sales of Intel processors by the US government was a serious blow. I do not believe that a chinese company would be willing to place its bets on a manufacturing partner that could be restricted to export its technology to China.

On the other hand, I tend to believe that this announcement is a preamble to a split of Intel Foundry and Intel (dont know how to call the rest).

By the way, it has been mentioned that LG is designing a SoC for Intel 10nm. Are there any info on that?

LG uses QCOM and MKT SoCs for their phones. Maybe they want better pricing so they will make their own SoC like Samsung did with the Exynos. Samsung replaced QCOM with Exynos last year but went back to QCOM this year. With a new wave of AR apps coming performance is going to be an issue so I'm bullish on QCOM and Apple since they make the best performing SoCs for AR.

The more I think about this the less it makes sense.... smells like a nothing burger to me.
 
I think this move was the right thing to do, and absolutely necessary for Intel. They need these volumes to make their leading edge fabs economic. The question is - can Intel Custom Foundry be competitive with TSMC on cost? Intel's continuing existence in it's current form depends on it.
 

Interesting take. If Intel Custom Foundry struggles, what's LG to do? My guess is turn back towards Qualcomm or Mediatek SoCs. As I've commented before, I don't think it's sustainable for every handset maker to develop it's own SoC. It adds a significant layer of fixed cost to their business, and if they can't in deliver high volume it becomes a competitive disadvantage rather than an advantage.
 
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