GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced that Rockchip’s next-generation mobile processors are ramping to production on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) process technology. Based on a multi-core ARM Cortex-A9 design, the RK3188 and RK3168 chips are optimized for tomorrow’s high-performance, low-cost tablets that require long-lasting battery life (see product specifications in annex).

The combination of Rockchip’s design and GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 28nm HKMG process technology resulted in a mainstream tablet System-on-Chip (SoC) capable of operating at up to 1.8 GHz performance, while still maintaining the power efficiency expected by mobile device users. The chips began sampling to OEMs in early 2013 and are now ramping to support a wide range of manufacturers.

“Collaborative foundry partnerships are critical for us to differentiate ourselves in the competitive market for mainstream mobile SoCs,” said Chen Feng, vice president of Rockchip. “We have chosen GLOBALFOUNDRIES as our strategic source partner of 28nm HKMG because their 28nm HKMG process has allowed us to ramp our products with very high yields in a relatively short timeframe. This partnership is a true demonstration of GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ unique approach to Collaborative Device Manufacturing.”

“At GLOBALFOUNDRIES, we are constantly seeking opportunities to offer our customers innovative silicon solutions to help them get the most benefits from their SoC designs,” said Mike Noonen, executive vice president of marketing, sales, design and quality at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “Our partnership with Rockchip is a great example of how early collaboration can result in better performance and power characteristics with reduced time-to-market. We are excited to see Rockchip successfully leveraging this technology on our production-proven HKMG process.”

GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 28nm-SLP technology is based on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ “Gate First” approach to HKMG, which has been in volume production for more than two years.