Posted on Thursday, October 02 2014 @ 13:36 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
TSMC and ARM announced they've successfully manufactured the first 64-bit ARM big.LITTLE processors on a 16nm FinFET process. Volume production of these Cortex A57/Cortex A53 big.LITTLE chips is expected to kick off next year, both NVIDIA and Apple are expected to be early adopters.
TSMC and ARM® today announced the results from a key FinFET silicon validation of the ARM big.LITTLE™ implementation, using ARM Cortex®-A57 and Cortex-A53
processors on TSMC’s advanced 16nm FinFET (16FF) process technology.
Silicon results on 16FF show the “big” Cortex-A57 processor achieving 2.3GHz for sustained mobile peak performance, as well as the “LITTLE” Cortex-A53 processor consuming only 75mW for most common workloads. The performance improvements are a result of the collaboration between ARM and TSMC to jointly optimize the 64-bit ARMv8-A processor series on FinFET process technologies and build on the successful tape-out of the Cortex-A57 processor on TSMC’s 16FF process last year.
Ongoing collaborative efforts are focused on TSMC’s 16FF+ process technology which will deliver an additional 11% gain in performance for the Cortex-A57 at the same power as the 16FF process, along with a further 35% power reduction for the Cortex-A53 when running low-intensity applications. This further increases the dynamic performance range and power savings for big.LITTLE platforms. 16FF+ is scheduled to be delivered by Q4 2014. Early big.LITTLE implementations of Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 processors on 16FF+ are supported by ARM POP™ IP technology.
"This silicon proof point with ARM Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 processors demonstrates the additional benefits in performance and power efficiency that 16nm FinFET technology delivers to big.LITTLE implementations,” said Pete Hutton, executive vice president and president, product groups, ARM. “The joint effort of ARM, TSMC, and TSMC’s OIP design ecosystem partners will transform end-user experiences across the next generation of consumer devices and enterprise infrastructure.”
"Our long-term collaboration with ARM continues to push advanced technologies that enable market-leading SoCs for mobile, server, and enterprise infrastructure applications worldwide,” said Dr. Cliff Hou, vice president, R&D, TSMC. “TSMC is proud to be the first foundry to validate the ARM big.LITTLE implementation on FinFET, and this achievement demonstrates in silicon the real-world capabilities of next-generation ARMv8 processors on TSMC’s advanced FinFET technology.”
ARM and TSMC will be presenting detailed results of this collaboration at TSMC’s OIP Ecosystem Forum at the San Jose Convention Center on Sept. 30, 2014; and ARM TechCon at the Santa Clara Convention Center on Oct. 2, 2014.
