Tuesday Cadence Design Systems and ARM announced the “tape out” of the industry’s first 20-nm design based on the ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processor. This means the artwork for the chip’s final design — its photomask used for manufacturing — was sent to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and used to create the first test chip. Now customers like Nvidia can create their own Cortex-A15 processor-based SoCs using the “gone gold” design.

Targeting TSMC’s 20-nm process, the design was jointly developed by engineers from ARM, Cadence and TSMC using a Cadence RTL-to-signoff flow. Cadence said that Tuesday’s milestone announcement is the result of an 18 month collaboration between ARM and Cadence on optimized design flows for the Cortex-A15 processor.

“The Cortex-A15 is our most advanced ARM processor to date,” said Mike Inglis, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Processor Division, ARM. “The test chip is an important milestone in ARM’s preparations to enable partners using Cadence design flows and targeting TSMC’s advanced process nodes. The joint development and 20-nm process node requirements necessitated a deep collaboration between the three companies. We look forward to evolving our relationship with Cadence to develop and deploy Cortex-A15 and several other ARM processors.”

The collaboration is part of a multi-year technology agreement signed by ARM and Cadence that will provide ARM engineering teams with ongoing access to Cadence products. Both teams will work together to unsure that ARM processors and Cadence’s design flows are optimized to work together.

“This important collaboration milestone enables customers to design Cortex-A15 processor-based designs at the most advanced process nodes,” said Chi-Ping Hsu, Senior Vice President, Research and Development, Silicon Realization Group at Cadence. “We intend to expand this collaborative model in working with ARM on the Cortex-A15 and other processor development.”

SOURCE via Marketwire