A BUNCH OF CHIP firms have banded together in a move that should get mighty Intel a bit hot under the collar.

It's called the Common Platform and the firms involved are IBM, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Samsung Electronics and ARM. And their aim is to develop a 32nm and 28nm Systems-on-a-Chip design "platform" based on high-k metal-gate (HKMG) technology.

ARM is particularly miffed with Intel and its hype of the wee Atom chip. The firm designs chips which have tipped up in close to a billion mobile devices and many of these are capable of accessing the Interweb. Intel has been running a smear campaign against ARM without naming the outfit directly. But when Intel says "the Internet runs on our architecture," it basically means "ARM has to faff about a bit to get Flash working on its devices."

So, getting on the front foot, ARM has announced it will develop and license a design platform of physical intellectual property including logic, memory and interface products for the Common Platform technology in alliance with its new mates IBM, Chartered and Samsung. What's more, the founding partners say they'll be happy to let other firms to join the party.

Senior IBMer Mike Cadigan reckons that "collaborative innovation in an open ecosystem of partners is the key to technology leadership, both now and in the years to come,”

The "unique" manufacturing collaboration will feature bulk CMOS 32nm, 45nm, 65nm and 90nm process technologies. µ