Will Arm start to build its own chips soon? Strategic Cortex-X collaboration with Samsung may well be first step in that direction

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We’ve heard for quite a few years now that Arm might be planning to build its own chips, and it looks as if things might be moving a step closer to that happening.

Samsung has announced a new strategic collaboration with Arm to deliver the next generation Arm Cortex-X CPU, optimized on Samsung Foundry’s latest Gate-All-Around (GAA) process technology.

This partnership is expected to pave the way for a series of innovations between the two tech giants, with ambitious plans to reinvent 2-nanometer (nm) GAA for next-generation data center and infrastructure custom silicon.

Pushing boundaries

The collaboration also aims to develop a groundbreaking AI chiplet solution, set to potentially revolutionize the future generative AI mobile computing market. The mutual goal is to redefine the possibilities in mobile computing and meet the relentless performance and efficiency demands of the AI era – and also represents a significant step in the direction of Arm potentially starting to build its own chips.

The partnership for now is focusing on the optimization of Arm’s Cortex-A and Cortex-X general-purpose CPU cores for Samsung’s next-generation 2nm-class process technology. The collaboration is expected to result in a wide range of applications, including next-generation data center and infrastructure custom silicon, smartphones, and various chiplet-based solutions.

As Tom’s Hardware points out, this underscores the importance of design collaboration between IP developers and foundries in maximizing performance and minimizing power consumption of circuits.

As a result of the joint work, customers of the two companies will be able to license Samsung 2nm-optimized versions of Cortex-A or Cortex-X cores, simplifying the development process and speeding up time-to-market. However, Arm and Samsung have yet to reveal when the first results of their collaboration will be available for their customers.

“Our longstanding collaboration with Samsung has delivered multi-generation, leading-edge innovation,” said Chris Bergey, SVP and GM, Client Business at Arm Inc. “Optimizing Cortex-X and Cortex-A processors on the latest Samsung process node underscores our shared vision to redefine what’s possible in mobile computing, and we look forward to continuing to push boundaries to meet the relentless performance and efficiency demands of the AI era.”