By Jane Lanhee Lee and Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) – Arm Ltd rolled out new chip technology for mobile devices on Monday and Taiwanese smartphone chipmaker MediaTek Inc said it would use it for its next-generation product.
MediaTek, a longtime supplier of low-end and mid-range smartphone chips, has entered the market to supply chips for high-end smartphones, once dominated by rival Qualcomm Inc, which is waging a legal battle. with Arm since last year on chip licensing agreements.
In Arm’s blog announcing the new products, MediaTek said the new chips will help improve the performance of its next-generation smartphones.
Arm sells blueprints that chip designers use to build their own hardware. It launches Immortalis-G720, a chip for video image processing and AI applications, and the Cortex-X4, a processor that would be the brain of the mobile device at the Computex conference in Taiwan.
Arm said the two new chips have 15% better performance than their previous generations, and the Cortex-X4 uses 40% less power, which is critical for smartphones that need to maintain long battery life. battery usage.
Arm also said it “registered” the Cortex-X4 at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., meaning it had a factory-made chip, an expensive process typically done by chip designers who sell the chip. final chip.
Asked by Reuters during a briefing if the release of the tape meant Arm was making a chip to sell instead of its longstanding business model of supplying the blueprint to chipmakers, Chris Bergey, the line’s chief executive of Arm’s customer activity, said it’s a step it sometimes takes to help test new manufacturing technologies for customers.
“Arm doesn’t sell chips. We don’t,” he said.
Last month, the Financial Times reported that Arm was developing its own chip to showcase the capabilities of its designs.
Arm said the Cortex-X4 has been registered on TSMC’s N3E process and said it was an industry first.
(Reporting by Jane Lanhee Lee and Stephen Nellis; Editing by Mark Porter)