The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced yesterday that they have managed to take a 28nm ARM Cortex-9 dual-core test chip to 3.1GHz under what they have called “typical conditions.”
This is almost unheard-of territory for an ARM processor and could see ARM shifting into more high-performance spheres.The TSMC 28nm HPM (high performance for mobile applications) process technology that was used to push the ARM 9 over the 3GHz mark can, according to TSMC, be used to make the same chip suitable for mobile (1.5GHz to 2.0GHz) and high-performance uses.
ARM’s Jim Nicholas said, “TSMC’s high performance 28HPM process is suitable for a wide range of advanced ARM-processor based applications, extending from high-frequency, performance-orientated computing devices to power sensitive applications. The collaboration between ARM, TSMC and our ecosystem partners has delivered an extensible implementation platform that enables flexibility in performance and power management tradeoffs for next generation products.”
Source: TSMC Image: ARM