In it together
But how do you go about securing the business of all these fabless semiconductor makers like Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Freescale. If only they all had something in common - some common denominator that GlobalFoundries could focus on to make itself more appealing to them.
They do, of course; they all design SoCs that use, to varying degrees, ARM intellectual property (IP). So it's no great surprise that the one company GlobalFoundries has been most keen to be associated with since the day it was formed has been ARM.
But what's in all this for ARM? Its ecosystem - the companies that license its IP - already has Taiwanese foundries like TSMC and UMC doing a perfectly good job of manufacturing its SoC and other embedded processors. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The answer is simple: competition. More competition equals more pressure to deliver equals a better deal for customers. Right now the vast majority of the semiconductor foundry business is located in Taiwan. It's appealing to ARM and its ecosystem to not only have more competition, but for there to be a more geographically diverse foundry offering.
The relationship between a foundry and its customer is a pretty intimate one, you see. You don't just email an order over and get it shipped a few weeks later. The process of turning a chip design into final silicon is increasingly complicated and requires a massive degree of collaboration between the foundry and its customer, so proximity becomes a factor.
Here's a slide from Brown's presentation illustrating the increasing number of mutually dependent service providers needed to create an SoC.
