At UMC Group foundry, development of 0.22um process completed ahead of schedule while 0.35 micron process achieves record defect densities

SAN JOSE, Calif., November 30, 1998: The United Silicon Inc. (USIC) wafer foundry in Taiwan, in which UMC Group and Xilinx (NASDAQ:XLNX) are equity partners, has successfully completed development of an advanced 0.22 micron process technology. The new one-poly, five-layer metal (1P/5M) dual-voltage process enabled the production of the new Xilinx Virtex series of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), including the industry's first million-gate device. Xilinx began sampling the million-gate Virtex FPGA in October and expects to begin production of all nine members of the Virtex product line during the first quarter of 1999.

The 0.22um process is a second-generation 0.25 micron technology from UMC Group. The manufacturing technology allows for significant die size reduction while maintaining the 2.5-volt operation.

"Working with exceptional companies like Xilinx is great for UMC Group and has challenged us to bring our process technology to the forefront of the semiconductor industry. We believe that UMC Group is currently the only dedicated foundry with significant production volumes at 0.25 micron, and the only one offering a 0.22 micron process," said Frank Wen, president of UMC Group Company USIC. "Our engineers continue to work closely with foundry partners such as Xilinx to meet their performance, yield, cost and time-to-market requirements."

"We've been extremely pleased with the progress made at USIC and with the technical prowess of UMC Group in general," said Dennis Segers, vice president of FPGA development at Xilinx and general manager of the company's high end FPGA business unit.

"In addition to the 0.22 micron process technology, the USIC foundry also has been in high volume production of the Xilinx XC4000XL FPGA devices since mid-year as a qualified second source. Working closely with UMC Group, we have quickly managed to achieve record defect densities with the 0.35 micron process that is used to make these devices," Segers said

About Xilinx

Xilinx is the leading innovator of complete programmable logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits, software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as cores, and unparalleled field engineering support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Xilinx invented the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and commands more than half of the world market for these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to reduce significantly the time required to develop products for the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, high-reliability/military, automotive and consumer markets. For more information, visit the Xilinx web site at www.xilinx.com.

Xilinx is a registered trademark, and all XC-prefix product designations and Virtex, are trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. Other brands or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Back to Top