May 01, 2018

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Arm announced today its Arm® Artisan® physical IP will be used in TSMC’s 22nm ultra-low power (ULP) and ultra-low leakage (ULL) platform for Arm-based SoCs. TSMC 22nm ULP/ULL is optimized for mainstream mobile and IoT devices, enabling improved performance for Arm-based SoCs, and reductions in both power and area when compared to the previous-generation TSMC 28nm HPC+ platform.

“This next-generation process technology addresses more functionality using less power and at a smaller area size,” said Gus Yeung, general manager, physical design group, Arm. "The combination of Artisan Physical IP and the design and manufacturing cost advantages of TSMC’s 22nm ULP/ULL platform will provide our mutual partners with immediate compute performance-per-milliwatt and area benefits.”

Artisan physical IP for TSMC 22nm ULP and ULL process technologies includes foundry-sponsored memory compilers optimized for the low-leakage and low-power requirements of next-generation edge computing devices. Complementary to those compilers are ultra-high-density and high-performance physical IP standard cell libraries including power-management kits, and thick-gate oxide cells to help optimize low-leakage power. General Purpose I/O solutions are also offered to ensure maximum performance, power and area (PPA) optimization.

“Artisan Physical IP enables TSMC to accelerate tape-out timelines and bring leading SoCs to market faster for mainstream IoT and mobile devices,” said Suk Lee, TSMC senior director, Design Infrastructure Marketing Division. “Building on our successful 28nm HPC+ platform collaboration, TSMC and Arm are delivering significant power and area reductions, giving our mutual silicon partners opportunities to enable an improved edge compute experience across more devices.”

Arm's physical IP is a trusted, widely used solution with more than 10 billion integrated circuits (ICs) shipped by Arm partners every year. The aggressive integration schedule of TSMC 22nm ULP and ULL process technologies is on-track for Arm and TSMC silicon partners targeting 2H 2018 tape-outs.