Samsung has announced that its is planning to expand its collaboration with Arm by using the 7/5-nanometre (NM) FinFET process in order to stay ahead of the competition in high-performance computing. With the partnership, the two hope to start producing Arm Cortex-A76 processors that are capable of more than 3GHz computing.
Discussing the news, Ryan Sanghyun Lee, VP of Foundry Marketing Team at Samsung Electronics, said:
“Building an extensive and differentiated design ecosystem is a must for our foundry customers. Collaboration with Arm in the fields of IP solutions is crucial to increase high-performance computing power and accelerate the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning capabilities.”
The two firms will leverage Samsung Foundry’s 7nm Low Power Plus (7LPP) and 5nm Low Power Early (5LPE) process technologies. According to Samsung, 7LPP should be ready for initial production in H2 2018. For its part, Arm will provide the Arm Artisan physical IP platform which includes HD logic architecture, a comprehensive suite of memory compilers, and 1.8V and 3.3V GPIO libraries.
Additionally, Arm will provide Artisan POP IP solutions on its newest cores featuring Arm DynamIQ technology. Arm"s POP IP solution brings "core-hardening acceleration technology" which enables the best Arm processor implementations and a speedy time-to-market.
Kelvin Low, VP of Marketing, Physical Design Group at Arm, said:
“Arm and Samsung Foundry have collaborated on a large number of chips using Artisan physical IP on Samsung Foundry process technologies. Samsung Foundry’s 7LPP and 5LPE nodes are innovative process technologies which will meet our mutual customers’ needs to deliver the next generation of advanced system-on-chips (SoCs) from mobile to hyperscale datacenters.”
Arm stated back in May that it would bring Cortex-A76 laptops to market in 2019 that can surpass 3GHz computing power. This timeline seems to be backed up by Samsung which said “the first extreme ultra violet (EUV) lithography process technology, and its key IPs, are in development and expected to be completed by the first half of 2019.”
Let us know in the comments, do you think Arm"s low-powered, high-performance CPU sounds appealing?