Intel today announced a key partnership that will allow chipmakers to build low-power SoCs on its 01A process. The collaboration will focus on designing mobile chipsets with Arm-based CPU cores, which will then eventually move to automotive, IoT, data center, and aerospace and government applications.
A press release from both Arm states that customers who design chipsets around Cortex CPU cores will be able to use Intel’s “breakthrough transistor technology to boost power and performance.” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said the “multigenerational agreement” will open up new options and approaches for companies looking to use next-generation process technologies.
Intel will provide chip designers with a foundry to actually manufacture said chips, while Arm is providing design technology co-optimization (DTCO) to simplify process flow and improve power, performance, area of Arm cores and cost.
This announcement is part of the IDM 2.0 strategy, in which Intel invests heavily in manufacturing capabilities worldwide, including expansion in the US and EU. The move will balance the supply chain and ease a bottleneck currently caused by heavy demand from a handful of chipmakers.
Intel 01 a process is basically a 1.8nm technology. A stands for Angstrom, a metric unit of length one step smaller than a nanometer, or billionth of a meter, or one-hundred-millionth of a centimeter. Moving toward such technologies means that future SoCs will be smaller and have higher transistor densities.
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