Pete Hutton – EVP and President of Product Groups
I think it’s very interesting,” ARM evp Pete Hutton told Electronics Weekly, “if you look at low-power/low-cost a lot of people are sticking at 28nm and not moving to 16nm finfet because it’s much more expensive. 22nm FD-SOI gets you the performance and it’s not much more expensive than 28nm.”
A couple of weeks back GloFo went big on FD-SOI announcing a 22nm process offering 70% power reduction over 28nm planar, while delivering finfet equivalent performance with a 50% reduction in masking layers
Asked if FD-SOI could become the mainstream mobile SoC process technology, Hutton replied: “It’s a technology that’s higher performance than 28nm and lower cost than 16nm finfet.”
Asked if Intel’s mobile SoC efforts were gaining traction with ARM’s chip-set manufacturing customers, Hutton replied: “They say they are having some success but we’re not seeing it.”
Asked if the chip-set companies were still getting the same level of contra-revenues from Intel, Hutton pointed to a lower level of mobile losses reported by Intel but added: “They’re still on the same path but it’s not affecting our customers.”
As to the effect of the Altera take-over by Intel, Hutton pointed out that Intel’s CEO has stated several times that they are aiming to retain and enhance Altera’s ARM-based FPGA line.
ARM-based microcontrollers continue to soar, growing 60% in unit volume this year and accounting for 1.4 billion units out of 3.4 billion ARM-based ICs shipped this year.
Asked if ARM is accounting for server-based revenues yet, Hutton replied: “We are, but I’m not telling you how much.”
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