In an exciting collaboration within the semiconductor industry, Taiwan’s Faraday Technology has announced plans to develop a new 64-core Arm-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) leveraging Intel’s advanced 18A process technology. This partnership brings together Faraday’s expertise in chip design services with Intel Foundry Services’ leading-edge manufacturing capabilities.
Faraday, known for its work on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), aims to create a high-performance Arm-based SoC for data center and high-performance computing applications. The design will utilize Neoverse cores from Arm, allowing optimized power efficiency and throughput for demanding workloads like AI.
Fabricating the SoC on Intel’s cutting-edge 18A process will enable enhanced transistor density and performance. By collaborating with Intel Foundry Services, Faraday gains access to these leading fabrication technologies before they are widely available.
This strategic chip development alliance highlights several key industry trends. First, it shows Arm’s continued momentum in the data center market, now expanding into customized high-end designs. Second, it validates Intel’s IDM 2.0 strategy, leveraging internal foundry capacity for advanced external clients like Faraday.
Faraday plans to deliver the new SoC on Intel 18A as part of an evaluation platform in 2025. This platform will streamline architecture testing and verification for Faraday’s customers, accelerating their own development of advanced data center and HPC chips.
“This solution will benefit our ASIC and design services customers, enabling them to expedite the time-to-market for cutting-edge data center and HPC applications,” said Steve Wang, Faraday’s CEO.
For Intel Foundry Services, partnering with Faraday on bleeding-edge Arm-based silicon helps further establish its IDM 2.0 model as it ramps up foundry operations. Attracting high-profile clients like Faraday will be key for Intel to compete against dedicated foundries like TSMC and Samsung.
Meanwhile, the collaboration demonstrates Arm’s progress in penetrating data center compute, where x86 architectures have dominated. With its Neoverse designs optimized for cloud workloads, Arm seeks to challenge that status quo. This cutting-edge Faraday SoC will put Neoverse to the test at the highest performance thresholds.
As AI, big data and other exponential workloads drive demand for more advanced chips, team-ups like Faraday and Intel may become more common. With this partnership, the two companies aim to push the envelope on Arm-based chip potential, marrying custom design talent with leading-edge manufacturing. The result could be a milestone silicon product that shapes the trajectories of multiple players across the semiconductor ecosystem.
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