Chip maker
Intel and British semiconductor IP company ARM announced an agreement that
could help boost the chip giant’s custom foundry business.
The deal,
revealed today at the the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, will allow
Intel Custom Foundry to make ARM processors for third parties.
Intel’s
latest earnings announcement made it clear that the company is in the midst of
a shift, and it needs to gear up for the Internet of Things. The agreement with
ARM Holdings, which was acquired by Japanese tech giant Softbank a month ago,
could be the first step in this direction.
“This will
allow Intel to compete with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung
foundries for the business of the likes of Qualcomm and Apple,” Abhinav
Davuluri, equity analyst for Morningstar in Chicago, wrote in an online note.
As part of
the collaboration, ARM and Intel Custom Foundry will accelerate the development
and implementation of ARM SoCs on Intel’s 10-nanometer process. Specifically,
Artisan Physical IP, ARM’s intellectual property, will be made available in the
process.
“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,” Zane Ball, co-general manager of Intel
Custom Foundry at Intel, wrote in a blog post.
Ball added
that Intel has partnered with ANSYS, Cadence, Mentor Graphics and Synopsys
previously. Intel also is making chips for customers such as Netronome and LG
Electronics, which recently announced a new flagship device that will be the
first handset to ship with Android 7.0.
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