IBM Tapes Out 14nm ARM Processor on Cadence Flow

IBM Tapes Out 14nm ARM Processor on Cadence Flow
by Paul McLellan on 10-30-2012 at 7:33 pm

An announcement at the ARM conference was of a joint project to tape out an ARM Cortex-M0 in IBM’s 14nm FinFET process. In fact they taped out 3 different versions of the chip using different routing architectures to see the impact on yield.

This was the first 14nm ARM tapeout, it seems. I’m sure Intel has built plenty … Read More


ARM 64-bit

ARM 64-bit
by Paul McLellan on 10-30-2012 at 6:56 pm

AMD announced yesterday that they would be building 64-bit ARM-based chips intended for use in servers. What was unclear is what the processors would be like. Although ARM had announced that they would move into 64-bit processors they didn’t have any that they had actually announced as being available for licensing.

At … Read More


Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better

Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2012 at 11:51 am

Intel announced its quarterly results a couple of days ago. They had previously downgraded 3rd quarter sales estimates but they managed to beat the downgraded numbers. If you look at the transcript of the call (I didn’t listen live) you’ll see very little mention of mobile and Atom. This is bad news for Intel. Its core… Read More


Altera’s Real Impact with ARM based SOC FPGAs

Altera’s Real Impact with ARM based SOC FPGAs
by Ed McKernan on 10-16-2012 at 8:15 pm

At the annual Linley Processor Conference this past week a number of chip vendors proposed a raft of new networking solutions directed at solving today’s bandwidth issues. Perhaps the overall highlight of the conference was the recognition by Keynote Speaker Linley Gwennap of the shift that is taking place towards ARM based solutions.… Read More


Apple and The Road Ahead to Building an x86 Processor

Apple and The Road Ahead to Building an x86 Processor
by Ed McKernan on 10-15-2012 at 9:00 am


A small blurb last week announced that Apple had hired Jim Mergard away from Samsung after just 15 months on the job. Previously to that he was a 16-year AMD veteran who headed up their low power x86 Brazos processor team. In near synchronicity, AMD hired Famed Apple Designer Jim Keller to be its chief microprocessor architect. When… Read More


ARM in Networking/Communications

ARM in Networking/Communications
by Paul McLellan on 10-11-2012 at 7:15 pm

I was at the Linley Processor Conference yesterday. There are two of these each year, one focused on mobile and this one, focused on networking and communications (so routers, base-stations and the like). You probably know that ARM is pretty dominant in mobile handsets (and Intel is trying to get a toe-hold although I’m skeptical… Read More


TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum 2012

TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum 2012
by Daniel Nenni on 10-07-2012 at 7:11 pm

The TSMC Open Innovation Platform® (OIP) Ecosystem Forum brings TSMC’s design ecosystem member companies together to share with our customers real-case solutions for customers’ design challenges and success stories of best practice in TSMC’s design ecosystem.


More than 90% of the attendees last year said “this… Read More


Exclusive Sneak Peek: Cadence at TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum 2012

Exclusive Sneak Peek: Cadence at TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum 2012
by Daniel Nenni on 10-05-2012 at 8:37 am

The TSMC Open Innovation Platform® (OIP) Ecosystem Forum brings TSMC’s design ecosystem member companies together to share with our customers real-case solutions for customers’ design challenges and success stories of best practice in TSMC’s design ecosystem. More than 90% of the attendees last year said “this… Read More


So British! with Mike MULLER (ARM CTO & Founder) at SAME Conference

So British! with Mike MULLER (ARM CTO & Founder) at SAME Conference
by Eric Esteve on 10-04-2012 at 5:36 am

SAME conference has started with Joel Huloux, Chairman of the MIPI Alliance, who gave a high level introduction about MIPI, rather business than technology oriented, talking to Marketing/Management audience. Extracting the main points from his presentation:

  • More than 30 specifications have been issued (Important remark:
Read More

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM!

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-02-2012 at 8:30 pm


Clearly the key to success in the foundry business is partnerships. Easy to say, harder to do, here is an excellent example of one that works: GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM announced in August 2012 a multi-year agreement to jointly deliver optimized system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for ARM® processor designs on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 20-nanometer… Read More