The pair have collaborated on 16nm and 10nm FinFET production processes in the past and this time hope to hatch out a 7nm low-power, high-performance SoCs. The cunning plan is to have one ready for mass silicon production during the first half of 2018.

While other outfits are having trouble getting 7nm together, TSMC claims that its development progress is on schedule. It appears to be based on its 10nm development.
ARM said that one of the purposes of the collaboration is to identify any potential challenges that mutual customers of the two firms will face when chip companies approachTSMC to mass produce their ARM-based designs at 7nm.

ARM has been drawing up its plans to target servers and next-generation networks for several years now, introducing a 64-bit version of its architecture and working with partners to bring SoCs appropriate for servers to fruition.