Following a recent agreement with TSMC, ARM announced that it has also entered into a contract with Globalfoundries to support the production of next-gen processors, including upcoming 64-bit server SoCs and Mali GPUs.
The announcement scales to a 20 nm production process and FinFET process technologies, which will be critical for ARM as it must meet acceptable production volumes for its licensees. The company said that it will be developing a full IP platform as part of the agreement with Globalfoundries, including standard cell libraries, memory compilers and POP IP solutions.
Globalfoundries agreed to fine-tune its production process to the "next-generation" ARM Cortex processor and Mali graphics processor technologies. The goal is to shorten the time-to-market for processor designers and help them quickly migrate to 3D FinFET transistors and reduce the likelihood or production problems.
ARM has been much more aggressive pitching the importance of FinFET recently. While 20 nm processor prototypes have been taped, for example, by Cadence in late 2011, commercial 20 nm FinFET processors are not expected to arrive until 2014/2015.
One has to remember that there are more ARM cores produced every year now than the combined number of x86 CPUs ever made. ARM needs a fantastic amount of production capacity that no single or indeed even group of processor manufacturers can lift.
x64 is AMDs x86s 64-bit extension (that Intel licenses, btw). Next generation ARM processor are 64-bit because they will be used in laptops, desktop and especially servers were a 64 bit register is needed.