ARM, SMIC extend partnership to 40-nm node

LONDON – Processor intellectual property licensor ARM Holdings plc and Chinese foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) have announced an agreement to collaborate on the development of a physical IP library platform for SMIC 65-nm LL and 40-nm LL technology process nodes.

The agreement will provide customers of SMIC (Shanghai, China) with free access to library suites of 9-track and 12-track multi-Vt logic libraries, power management kits, ECO kits and ARM authored memory compilers.

The agreement extends a longstanding partnership between ARM and SMIC that has covered manufacturing process technologies at 180-, 130-, 110- and 90-nm.

"As the leading provider of physical IP, ARM is pleased to collaborate with SMIC to enable broader adoption of our technology," said Simon Segars, ARM (Cambridge, England), executive vice president and general manager of the physical IP division, in a statement.

"By expanding our partnership with ARM we are offering our customers an easy migration path to our 65nm and 40nm LL technology using industry leading ARM physical IP that can accelerate their time-to-volume production on our process platform," said Chris Chi, senior vice president and chief business officer of SMIC.

The suite of physical IP will be available for free download from ARM's DesignStart online access portal. The 65-nm LL libraries will be available October 2010 and the 40-nm LL will be available in Q1 2011, ARM said.

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