The obvious aim is to offer SOI compatible designs blocks and complete processor cores that are optimized for SOI that would enable lower power consumption or higher operating performance for a multitude of applications, not least in the mobile phone sphere. In doing so, SOI could be adopted by a much larger potential customer base that is currently restricted to IDM's such as AMD, IBM, Freescale and Sony.

"SOI technology will complement our existing CMOS-based physical IP by providing customers with an additional set of choices for improving performance, while conserving power, as semiconductor processes migrate to ever-smaller geometries over the next few years," said Mike Muller, CTO, ARM.  "Soitec's position as the driving force behind SOI development to date is undisputed and we look forward to working with them in the future."

The move by ARM to offer its expertise in core logic design as well as potentially open up its broad customer base and deep foundry relationships is perhaps the most significant step yet made by Soitec to expand its customer base outside IDM's.
 
"We are extremely pleased to see ARM supporting the SOI ecosystem.  We look forward to partnering with them to further develop the design infrastructure that will be critical to the high-performance, low-power consumption chips that SOI enables," said André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, Soitec president and CEO.  "It is definitely another important step forward in the broad commercialization of SOI technology, which is becoming increasingly critical in the fables and foundry communities."
 
Soitec didn't provide guidance on when various IP designs would be made available via the ARM agreement or timing for foundries such as TSMC to announce process qualified ARM IP.