ARM and GlobalFoundries: a key relationship in the future

By SemiWiki

March 28, 2011

Although there has been always a strong relationship between ARM and GlobalFoundries, it is interesting to notice that Intel has helped to boost it and make it even stronger. Indeed when AMD renegotiated its x86 licensing deal with Intel in 2009, one of the most significant long-term changes was a marked reduction in how much of GlobalFoundries AMD had to own in order to remain within the terms of its manufacturing license. As a result of this change, AMD announced in January 2010 that it intended to significantly accelerate the financial split between itself and GlobalFoundries; we now have seen the impact of that transition on the GlobalFoundries' side of the business. During 2010, GFI has developed a new strategic partnership with ARM, in which the two companies collaborate on leading-edge, 28nm system-on-chip (SoC) designs. This strategy should allow GlobalFoundries to attract more customers especially this designing Application processor for the wireless handset segment. We have to keep in mind that the Smartphone market has been 302 Million unit in 2010 with a 70% YoY growth rate (and is expected to grow to about 600 Million in 2015) to be compared with a total PC market at 350 Million where Intel processors represent 80% market share, leaving a TAM of 70 Million units for their competitor, and the foundries processing the processor. We now better understand how strategic is for GlobalFoundries such a move to enhance ARM partnership, and be the first to support ARM Cortex A9 in 28nm.

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