28nm and 22nm variants of "Eagle"
Recently, we had the opportunity to meet the President of ARM, Mr. Tudor
Brown, the man who stands right beside the CEO, who gave
us many industry insights into the next few years to come.
At a Globalfoundries fab tour presentation, Tudor talked
about ARM's new chip codenamed Eagle, a product launching in 2013 that involves high-end
graphics, multi-cores and increased security. This is something that might be powering many mobile
phones and handheld devices at some point after 2013. The issue of seeing these
chips in retail products right after chip launch is that it takes at least a year for manufacturers to
develop new handheld and mobile phone platforms.
It's somewhat remarkable when you're presented an insight of what is coming
in the 2013 timeframe, as three years is a significant amount of time in the IT sector due to its fast progression. During this time, mobile internet will become even more mainstream, and it has already
become a lifestyle necessity for a significant majority of people. Let’s not forget to mention that ARM's Eagle core should
materialize in Globalfoundries' 28nm bulk process and with time it will shift
to 22nm.
It is important to bear in mind that ARM's CPU core is integrated within Qualcomm,
Texas Instruments and Nvidia Tegra chips, and probably some other important designs
that we forgot to mention; especially right now while flying 30,000 feet in an airplane that still doesn’t
offer any mobile internet to its passengers. (Thank God for that, I'm taking the rest of the day off. sub.ed.)