AMD Partners with ARM, Safeguards Its Chips Better

Analysts and common people alike have been speculating on, even hoping for, a partnership between Advanced Micro Devices and ARM, and now they've got it.

The announcement made by Advanced Micro Devices during AFDS (AMD Fusion Developer Summit) isn't quite what everyone may have had in mind though. That is to say AMD did not suddenly announce plans for ARM-based accelerated processing units. Instead, it has signed an agreement with ARM for the integration of the latter's TrustZone technology in its future APUs. In fact, the Sunnyvale, California-based company hopes to have TrustZone-enabled APUs out and about by next year (2013). Thus, consumers and businesses should enjoy a more secure access to their content and safer online transactions.

To cram TrustZone features into x86 APUs, AMD will develop a tiny platform security processor based on an ARM Cortex-A5 CPU (TrustZone is integrated into all Cortex-A CPUs). This small chip will be included in the APU itself, somehow. Software-based antivirus is all well and good, but it is much harder for malicious programs to access sensitive data when security is available at hardware level. “As technology becomes more important to our everyday lives, security needs to be present in every single device. The challenge that the industry faces is how to make this a reality,” said Ian Drew, executive vice president, strategy, ARM. “Through this technology partnership with AMD, and the broadening of the ARM TrustZone technology ecosystem, we’re making another important step towards a solution. The aim is to make security accessible and consistent for consumers and business users across all computing devices.”

This is just one of the recent deals that Advanced Micro Devices scored with ARM Holdings. The two companies have also teamed up with MediaTek, Imagination and Texas Instruments (the Heterogeneous System Architecture / HSA Foundation) for creating a single architecture specification and a simpler programming model for heterogeneous computing software.

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