ARM has licensed its physical IP to Globalfoundries and will work with the Abu Dhabi-backed foundry to port its Cortex A-9 processors to Globalfoundries' 28nm process.
"This announcement reflects our business value and strategy of providing best-in-class processor implementation by marrying our own processor and physical IP with world class manufacturing semiconductor technology," said Warren East, chief executive officer, ARM.
"This collaboration with Globalfoundries and their commitment to delivering leading-edge technology makes them an ideal partner to accelerate the adoption of ARM processor-based technology at 28nm."
Last year, ARM joined IBM, Chartered Semiconductor and Samsung in an SOC development alliance for 32nm and 28nm semiconductor process technology using IBM's high-k metal-gate (HKMG) process.
ARM agreed, a year ago, to develop Cortex processor IP for the 32nm and 28nm processes, and license the processor peripherals intellectual property (IP) including logic, memory and interface products for the 32nm and 28nm design platform for SoCs.
Since then, Globalfoundries, which owns AMD's Dresden fabs which use IBM's process technology, has bought Chartered.
All these companies are part of the IBM Common Platform Alliance aimed at developing future process technology.
"This relationship further advances our strong focus to partner with industry leaders in processor design to deliver manufacturing and technology excellence at the leading edge," said Doug Grose, chief executive officer, Globalfoundries, "this highly complementary partnership leverages ARM's architectural leadership along with Globalfoundries' advanced technology to enable the deployment of 28nm SoC designs with exceptional performance for next-generation consumer devices."
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