Industry giants IBM and ARM Holdings have partnered up to design and manufacture low-power semiconductor chips which ARM is planning to use in upcoming mobile chipsets. This is not the first collaboration between IBM and ARM, with similar projects stretching back to 2008 on 32nm and 28nm chips.

ARM developers semiconductor chips which are used in many of today's smartphones, and this time, they are taking on the challenge of shrinking the manufacturing process down to 14nm. This is quite surprising when you consider that 65nm and 45nm manufacturing processes were achieved in 2006 and 2008 respectively.

Below is a quote taken from the announcement:

ARM's Cortex processors have become the leadership platform for the majority of smart phones and many other emerging mobile devices," said Michael Cadigan, general manager, IBM Microelectronics. "We plan to continue working closely with ARM and our foundry customers to speed the momentum of ARM technology by delivering highly advanced, low-power semiconductor technology for a variety of new communications and computing devices

One of the benefits of the partnership will be smaller and more powerful chips for mobile devices that still require less power than previous generations, which is a definite plus in a world where innovation in computing power has surpassed battery technology innovation. I wouldn't be surprised if the 14nm process which ARM and IBM are working on does not have any consistently working examples available until sometime in 2013 or 2014.