ARM Community: ARM @ DAC: eReaders, Wafers and Demos from GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung - ARM Community

Wednesday was the last day of Design Automation Conference (DAC) and I spent my time visiting some of the ARM demos at the ARM Connected Community Partner booths learning about the various ways that our technology is being used with our Partners’ technologies and generally catching up with Partners. Highlights include the eReader, wafers and demos at the Common Platform booth and the presentation at the GlobalFoundries (GF) booth.

Common Platform: eReader, wafers and demos

I wandered over to the Common Platform (CP) booth to see multiple demos, some actual wafers and the Barnes and Noble Nook eReader on display. Starting with the eye candy in the display case, I learned that the Nook has a Samsung S3C6410 Application Processor (ARM1176) with 65nm LP that runs at 533MHz. There were also two wafers in the case: a 28nm LP HKMG wafer from GF and a 32nm LP HKMG wafer from Samsung. Rob Aitken was in the booth at the time and told me that what was cool about these wafers was that they weren’t fully processed so you could actually see (but not touch) stuff. He’d like them for the ARM office.



At the Samsung pod in the CP booth, I learned about two demos. The 45nm demo board was cool because I could see Cortex-A9 working silicon that displayed video. The demo included an ARM Cortex-A9 processor with ARM physical IP (logic, interface and embedded memory IP), LCD controller, AC97, UART, SPI, DMA Controller, AXI/AHB bus subsystem that was manufactured by Samsung CMOS45LP process technology.



The second demo was a 65nm demo board that displayed a variety of graphics including photos and video. The demo was near HD video quality with a touch screen display that was WiFi enabled. The demo included an ARM11™ processor, Mali™-200, and ARM physical IP (logic, interface and embedded memory IP) that was manufactured by Samsung CMOS 65G process technology.



At the ARM pod, I was intrigued to learn more about the multiple test chips that Simon Segars mentioned ARM had taped out at 32 and 28 nm. The image below shows the ARM processor (Cortex-M3), physical IP, and foundry over time as ARM moved from early prototype silicon to volume production ready physical IP.



And in case you want one more medium to see that ARM, IBM, Synopsys, GlobalFoundries, and Samsung delivered 32nm as promised, here is a video that talks about the companies working together to bring vertically optimized solutions for 32/28nm SoC designs.



GlobalFoundries booth: ARM IP Meeting the SoC Design Challenges

At the GF booth the ARM stand was discussing our customers’ challenges of integrating multiple IP with multiple vendors into their SoC design. With each smaller process node, the complexities of the SoC design increases; however, at the same time customers are trying to add more features and functions to their design while still hitting their performance parameters. To ease the design process, customers want synchronized, coordinated and optimized solutions for the manufacturing process. ARM’s products (specifically highlighted were processors, interconnect and 28 nm physical IP) are designed to work with each other to meet those customer challenges.

The End of DAC

I have a few more blogs in me still to go: ARM R&D view of DAC and Social Media at DAC. However, I’ve found that I only have about one blog in me a day.

What was my personal highlight of the day? When one of the ARM people told me that soon after the publishing of yesterday’s blog, they got a rush of people in their booth to see the highlighted demo. Glad that you’re finding some of the information useful. Please feel free to drop a line at Tell.Us@arm.com to let us know what content that you want more and less of.

As I write this blog I won’t lie - I’m glad that DAC is over. The furious pace, stimulating discussions and socialization with old friends is mentally and physically exhausting. And to think that we used to have another ½ day to go. Phew.

Lori Kate Smith, Partnership Marketing Manager, ARM, has the best job at ARM because she gets to work with ARM Partners developing programs that enable broader support for the ARM architecture in her role of managing the ARM Connected Community. She’s passionate about creating communities where engineers can share information, find answers to their questions and talk about cool technologies. Prior to ARM, Lori Kate spent time in multiple different industries including EDA (Cadence, Verisity, Axis Systems), Enterprise Software and dot bomb (HelloBrain), and wireless (Metricom (Ricochet), AT&T, and MCCaw Cellular equally splitting her time between every marketing and buz dev role you can imagine and major account sales. If there’s a new technology to launch or sell, she’s game. Lori Kate even managed to get a few degrees at Santa Clara University (MBA) and Middlebury College (BA).

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