Growth of more than 25% year-on-year in underlying royalty revenues for both PD and PIPD provides evidence of the increasing use of ARM’s technology in the fast expanding consumer electronics market.

IQ Online caught up with Nathan Bozeman, Director of Product Marketing at ARM to get an in-depth look at PIPD and the challenges the industry faces.

Can you provide an overview of ARM Physical IP division and how it fits into the company’s strategy?

ARM is the world’s leader in embedded processor technology with billions served up in Smart Phones, Network Appliances and Mobile Internet Devices on an annual basis. These processors are delivered as RTL and as such much be implemented based upon foundation IP consisting of Logic IP such as Standard Cells and Power Management, Memory IP including embedded SRAM and Register Files not to mention Interface IP such as General Purpose I/O. PIPD is focused on delivering the high quality of results when ARM processors are developed using ARM physical IP.

ARM PIPD business has been moving from the technology catch-up phase , which has been a strategic focus since the acquisition of Artisan, towards the development of leading edge technology. How is this transition going?

It is not as much catch up as the time at which ARM PIPD intercepts a foundry roadmap. ARM PIPD has been consistently moving towards the earliest possible engagement, that time when the initial process rules are available from the foundry. By engaging early ARM PIPD can directly contribute to the underlying process technology enabling both foundries and ARM to benefit from earliest market feedback.

How is PIPD strengthening its capabilities to drive increased productivity?

PIPD has been working to strengthen and optimize its internal flows, methodologies and tools to increase efficiency, productivity and reduces overall time to market. PIPD is also creating new flows on a continuous basis to enable the latest views to support the latest tools from our EDA partners.

What, if any, are the major challenges of customer centric development for leading edge technology using advanced node processes?

Customer centric development poses interesting challenges in that all “customers” have specific care-abouts and personal value add. The challenge this presents is in finding those commonalities across multiple customers and markets that may be shared within the resulting IP.

ARM has physical IP – but how does it address the issue of companies doing it themselves?

Many Fab-lite IDMs have internal IP development capabilities and keep these resources on line as they believe this capability provides competitive and time to market advantages. PIPD agrees that there is a competitive advantage on the highest levels of IP, but these high levels of IP are built on the foundation IP that can be provided by PIPD.

ARM recently announced it was putting $1 million into its VLSI Lab in Bangalore, India. The Bangalore centre will become the only one incorporating all ARM IP aside from Cambridge. How do you see the IP market expanding in the Asia/Pacific region?

APAC region is driving tremendous volumes of silicon in the mainstream technology nodes such as 250nm, 180nm and 130nm. ARM PIPD sees consistent growth of these process geometries and the underlying IP required. To that end ARM is actively working to keep these mainstream process IP technologies up to date with the latest tools support and features learned from smaller geometires.

ARM has made no secret of the fact that the move to 32 nm is a costly one. How is ARM facing this challenge?

ARM is attacking this issue head on by diving into the learning curve early in the process. ARM PIPD will have taped out 32nm learning IP to early technology shuttles enabling ARM to significantly accelerate time to market for 32nm IP.

Rocketing design costs are leading to collaboration in the industry. How will ARM aid chip makers in jumping into the physical-IP market at 32 nm node?

ARM is all about industry collaboration whether foundries, EDA tools, customers or any other key stakeholders. It is this Connected Community of partner collaboration that keeps ARM at the forefront of technology.

How can it help chipmakers offset the risk?

ARM PIPD will have developed it 32nm IP through a highly iterative process of develop and test in silicon through early 32nm IP shuttles. It is this iterative approach that ensures ARM will have solid silicon proven IP in advance of customer needs.

With ARM rapidly appearing in an ever-broader range of digital devices, how has ARM positioned itself to capitalise on this huge long-term opportunity?

ARM continues to push the technology envelope of performance, area and power enabling ARM processors to be utilized in more and more market segments. ARM divisions work closely together to ensure that all IP works together in a manner that enables ARM to capitalize on these opportunities.

How does ARM provide a competitive advantage by having both Physical IP and Processor IP expertise in one company?

While ARM processors are delivered as RTL at some point the processor must be instantiated as a physical element and this may only be done with physical IP. ARM has a significant industry advantage in that it can tailor its physical IP to deliver the best Quality of Results when an ARM processor is coupled with ARM physical IP. No other IP provider in the world can say this.

How does ARM compare to Virage?

Virage is a general purpose IP provider that delivers mainstream physical IP to general purpose applications.

How do ARM libraries and physical IP blocks compare to TSMC?

ARM has been delivering physical IP for almost 14 year, while TSMC has been delivering physical IP for a couple of years. ARM also is the world’s leader in processor IP. The combination of processor and physical IP development is significant.

Chips based on 32nm processes are expected to hit the market starting in 2009.Crystal ball gazing, how can we see ARM’s Physical IP business shaping up by 2010?

PIPD will have market changing IP available by this time frame enabling semiconductor partners to create embedded solutions to fend off the Intel push into traditional embedded CPU space. ARM will enable customers to reach performance goals heretofore unachievable.