Arm recently announced a new update to mark the one-year anniversary of Arm Total Design.

Arm Total Design has grown rapidly with the participation of around 30 companies by bringing together capabilities from design to foundry manufacturing, and the ecosystem has been newly joined by domestic semiconductor design company SemiFive, Alcor Micro, Egis, and PUF Security.

Through the ecosystem, Arm, Samsung Foundry, AD Technologies, and Rebellion are collaborating to bring to market AI CPU chiplet platforms targeting cloud, high-performance computing (HPC), and AI/ML training and inference workloads.

“As AI compute demands grow, developers need compute platforms that are performance- and power-optimized and accessible to easily execute their innovations,” said Eddie Ramirez, vice president of go-to-market strategy for Arm’s infrastructure business unit. “The Arm Compute Subsystem (CSS) and Arm Total Design accelerate ecosystem AI development by providing faster access to hardware and software advancements,” he said.

■ New Arm-based solution for AI data centers

Arm Total Design has facilitated global collaborations that have led to CSS-based solutions for generative AI computing, such as the collaboration between Arm, Samsung Foundry, AD Technologies, and Rebellion to develop an AI CPU chiplet platform.

Targeting cloud, HPC, AI/ML training and inference workloads, the platform builds ADTechnology’s Neoverse CSS V3-based compute into chiplets and combines Rebellion’s REBEL AI accelerator with those compute chiplets, implemented on Samsung Foundry’s 2nm Gate All Around (GAA) advanced process technology.

“AI and HPC designs require technology solutions that deliver ultimate performance, high transistor density, and energy efficiency,” said Taejoong Song, senior vice president of business development at Samsung Electronics’ Foundry Business Unit. “We are excited to leverage the flexibility of Arm CSS and the strength of the Arm Total Design ecosystem to provide an AI CPU chiplet platform for hyperscalers and cloud service providers.”

As AI workloads rapidly evolve, tightly coupled CPU compute is essential to support the entire AI stack. Data preprocessing, orchestration, and database augmentation techniques such as Augmented Search Generation (RAG) all benefit from the performance efficiency of Arm Neoverse CPUs.

Arm has included support for these requirements in CSS, and has highlighted that the ecosystem benefits from Arm’s innovations through Arm Total Design.

■ A new standard for special-purpose AI infrastructure

CSS and Arm Total Design are contributing to the hardware foundation for sustainable AI data centers. Arm Total Design is already developing Arm-based test chips and chiplet products powered by Neoverse N-series or V-series CSS.

Alcor Micro announced today that it is building a CSS-based chiplet targeting AI/ML training and inference use cases. Alphawave also announced its own CSS-based advanced compute chiplet for AI/ML, HPC, data center, and 5G/6G applications. Arm emphasized that the Arm-based chiplet is an example of the diversity, flexibility, and global supply chain that can be provided through Arm partnerships.

Additionally, Arm Total Design Partners, including Alphawave, Cadence, and proteanTecs, are validating third-party IP products using CSS at leading-edge nodes to ensure compliance with Arm specifications and standards. This means partners can build CSS-based custom silicon at leading-edge nodes and deliver a seamless software experience.

The Arm Total Design ecosystem benefits from the ability to leverage a software ecosystem that integrates the various silicon solutions that partners bring to market. An example is the introduction of Arm Kleidi technology, which optimizes Arm’s CPU-based inference for open source projects such as PyTorch and Llama.cpp.

Arm said this is especially important to Arm Total Design partners building CSS-based chiplets for edge AI computing without accelerators.