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ARM's relentless attack on Intel's dominant position continues. In recent months, the mobile-friendly company has won major victories in the form of the ARM-compatible Windows RT operating system and cracking the 3.0GHz clock speed barrier with a smaller, 28nm-based Cortex A9. Now, ARM's following Intel's lead on another major front: 3D transistors. Today, ARM announced it has signed a long-term deal with TSMC to develop sub-20nm 64-bit CPUs based around TSMC's FinFET 3D transistor technology.
Intel's leap into Tri-Gate 3D transistors gave Ivy Bridge a big jump in power efficiency and a decent performance boost. ARM's processors -- more specifically, mostly its Cortex A9 processors -- are already found in scads of mobile devices and boast impressive energy efficiency; switching to 3D transistors could make ARM-powered smartphones and tablets last even longer.
Meanwhile, focusing on the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture in these 3D transistor-based chips -- current ARM procs are 32-bit -- opens up the doors for ARM in higher-end computing and server applications. Prototype ARMv8 systems aren't expected to start showing up until 2014, however.
The big question is: can TSMC actually keep up with market demand? Making the jump to 28nm has been difficult for the fab company, and adding vertical transistors adds a whole new dimension of complexity (literally).
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Happy
July 23, 2012 at 6:35pm
Can someone please explain to me why TSMC can make FinFet chips that are sub-20nm for ARM but AMD seems stuck at 32nm?
whr4usa
July 26, 2012 at 2:12pm
AMD nolonger manufactures anything
they spun off their manufacturing into "Global Foundries" years ago
AMD has always "adopted and amended" others' technologies
ARM has always designed everyhing from scratch then sold rights to manufacture or consulted on modification of those designs to be manufactured for specific purposes
which company do you think has better mindshare? marketshare? competitiveness?
John Pombrio
July 23, 2012 at 4:02pm
Brad, ARM sales (ARM Holdings PLC (ARM.L)) for last year were $875 million dollars. Intel's sales was $53 billion, 60 times higher. I don't think that ARM is a serious threat to Intel, in fact Intel could bury ARM anytime it wanted to. If things do tumble in the market, ARM is much more likely to be seriously hurt than Intel.
I like ARM, it is aggressive and creates great products, but it still is in a niche market.
whr4usa
July 23, 2012 at 9:14pm
you can't really compare those sales numbers directly since ARM only designs chips, which it sells unlimited manufacturing or/and limited modification rights to partners
Intel on the other hand designs AND manufactures both Itanium and 'x86' as well as designing and manufacturing its own network, storage, pci, display, audio, memory and remote management chipsets which it also then builds finished products out of in varying degrees from 'simple' quadport gigabit ethernet NICs to whole servers, complete with Microsoft, RedHat or VMware licenses
in terms of marketshare of all computing devices, ARM wins but its 'open-source' approach to licensing its architecture leads to so many incompatabilities that marketshare can't be considered as a single unit unlike x86
in terms of corporate financials or manufacturing capabilities and R&D Intel obviously has an upperhand but Intel isn't just processors - ARM is
P.S; VIA has been the 'real' x86 challenger to Intel for some time ...why VIA's take on the virtualization extensions hasn't become supported by KVM, Hyper-V, Parallels, vSphere and only in Xen with effort is beyond me ...AMD lost strategically on x86 long ago...its fusion architecture today only succeeds because its primarily "cheap display/parallel" instead of 'traditional' x86
