At the 2010 Mobile World Congress, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM today unveiled new details on their System-on-Chip (SoC) platform technology for powering the next generation of wireless products and applications.

The new chip manufacturing platform is projected to enable a 40 percent increase in computing performance, a 30 percent decrease in power consumption, and a 100 percent increase in standby battery life. The new platform includes collaboration on two GLOBALFOUNDRIES process variants: 28nm super low power (SLP) for mobile and consumer applications and 28nm high performance (HP) for applications requiring maximum performance.

The ARM and GLOBALFOUNDRIES SoC platform is based on the ARM Cortex- A9 processor, optimized ARM physical IP and GLOBALFOUNDRIES' 28nm Gate-First High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) process. Together, ARM and GLOBALFOUNDRIES will enable manufacturers of embedded devices such as smartphones, smartbooks, tablets and more to address increasing design and manufacturing complexities while reducing time to volume production at mature yields. GLOBALFOUNDRIES expects to start production on these next-generation technologies in 2H 2010 at Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES' 28nm process with Gate-First HKMG technology provides significant performance gains over the previous generation 40/45nm technologies. Current estimates show 28nm with HKMG will provide approximately 40 percent higher performance within the same thermal envelope, delivering improved application performance and enriched multi-tasking capabilities on mobile devices.

Also, improvements in power efficiency are necessary with each new technology generation to deliver longer talk/standby time, multimedia playback and interactive gaming and graphics. The combined benefits of ARM IP and GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm HKMG process enables up to a 30 percent reduction of power consumption and 100 percent increase in standby battery life compared to 40/45nm.

In addition to the partnership with GLOBALFOUNDRIES, ARM has established strategic relationships with other members of the IBM Joint Development Alliance to enable the development of optimized processor and physical IP tuned to the HKMG process. ARM will be showcasing the first 28nm wafer with HKMG technology at Mobile World Congress demonstrating the advantages of early enablement with their foundry partners to accelerate the migration to advanced node design in next generation SoCs.