ARM and TSMC today announced a new multi-year agreement that will deliver ARMv8-A processor IP optimized for TSMC 10FinFET process technology. The agreement follows the success in scaling from 20SoC to 16FinFET. This early pathfinding work will provide learning to enable physical design IP and methodologies in support of the companies' customers to tape-out 10FinFET designs as early as Q4 2015.

TSMC will be applying the learnings from prior generations of 20SoC and 16FinFET in the ARM ecosystem to offer performance and power improvements at 10FinFET that will be better than previous nodes. The ARM ecosystem can also take advantage of TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform (OIP) which includes a set of ecosystem interfaces and collaborative components initiated and supported by TSMC.

The joint innovations from previous TSMC and ARM collaborations have resulted in early access to ARM Artisan Physical IP and tape-outs of ARM Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 processors on 16FinFET. During the ARM Tech Con, TSMC claimed its 16nm FinFET process can drive a 64-bit ARM Cortex A57 core to 2.6 GHz.

Samsung also showed a working 14nm FinFET device, without providing details. The company showed a mobile applications processor decoding high-definition video on a handset and a TV screen. It would not say whether the chip was a next-generation version of the company’s Exynos family.

Samsung's 14nm FinFET processis fully qualified and in production, but Samsung declined to comment on its yields or volumes.

At the same event, Samsung and GlobalFoundries also reiterated their ongoing partnership, announced in April, on the 14nm process. Both companies aim to have products ramping into volume production next year.