Globalfoundries says it has taped-out a qualification vehicle based on the ARM Cortex A9 dual processor on 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) technology.
This is being seen as the next step on the foundry’s route to full production of 28nm system-on-chip devices next year.
The production run at the foundry’s Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany and was part of a collaboration with ARM announced last year.
Silicon results are expected back from the fab in late 2010.
The tape-out devices used an optimised ARM Cortex-A9 physical IP suite, including a full range of standard cell libraries, high-speed cache memory macros for L1 and density-optimised memories in other areas.
It is designed to emulate an SoC for maximum frequency analysis and short turnaround time between design cycles.
“As the industry adopts increasingly advanced process technologies, there is a growing need for close collaboration between design and manufacturing,” said Simon Segars, executive v-p and general manager, physical IP division at ARM.
As well as the 28nm HP process, the companies are also working on IP for the 28nm High Performance Plus (HPP) technology for both wired and high-performance mobile applications, and the Super Low Power (SLP) technology for power-sensitive mobile and consumer applications.
In a separate announcement Globalfoundries said that it would bring Freescale Semiconductor’s thin film storage (TFS) flash memory products to market on 90nm technology.
The flash technology will be embedded in ColdFire+ and Kinetis families of 32-bit microcontrollers for applications such as medical devices and smart metering systems.