Contract chip designer Faraday Technology on Monday announced plans to develop one of the industry's first 64-core processors based on Arm Neoverse technology. It will be made by Intel Foundry Services using its 18A (1.8nm-class) fabrication process.
The new system-on-chip based on 64 Arm Neoverse cores will address a wide range of applications, including scalable hyperscale data centers, infrastructure edge, and advanced 5G networks, according to Faraday. The chip designer said that the SoC will also feature various interface IPs from the Arm Total Design ecosystem, but did not reveal which. It's logical to expect the processor to feature PCIe, CXL, and DDR5 technologies.
It should be noted that Faraday will not market the processor itself, but will offer its design to its customers, who will be able to tailor it for their needs. For now, it is not even clear whether Faraday has a potential customer, but the company seems to be confident of Arm's Neoverse technology on the Intel 18A fabrication process. These potential CPUs will be made by Intel Foundry Services and will likely be among the first Arm-based datacenter processors made by IFS.
So far, Intel Foundry Services has landed several orders for data center chips, including a cloud data center chip on Intel 3, a custom server chip for Ericsson, and Intel 18A-based chips for the U.S. Dept. of Defense. In addition, Intel assembles data center system-in-packages for Amazon Web Services.
"As a design service partner in Arm Total Design, Faraday strategically targets the most advanced technology nodes to fulfill the evolving needs of future applications," said Steve Wang, CEO of Faraday. "We are excited to announce the development of our new Arm Neoverse-based SoC platform, leveraging Intel 18A technology. This solution will benefit our ASIC and DIS (Design Implementation Service) customers, enabling them to expedite the time-to-market for cutting-edge data center and HPC applications."
Intel 18A technology relies on gate-all-around RibbonFET transistors as well as PowerVia backside power delivery. The fabrication process promises a 10% performance-per-watt improvement over Intel 20A and is expected to be particularly suitable for data center applications.
"We are pleased to work with Faraday in the development of the SoC based on Arm Neoverse CSS utilizing our most competitive Intel 18A process technology," said Stuart Pann, Intel senior vice president and general manager of Intel Foundry Services (IFS). "Our strategic collaboration with Faraday demonstrates our commitment to delivering technology and manufacturing innovation across the global semiconductor supply chain helping Faraday’s customers to seamlessly meet the world-leading power and performance standards for SoC designs."
It is noteworthy that Intel Foundry Services and Arm announced collaboration on mobile system-on-chips to be made on Intel 18A fabrication technology in April 2023. So far, the agreement has yet to bear fruits, but as it turns out, at least one contract chip designer is interested in addressing the data center market with Arm Neoverse and Intel 18A.
