Micronas Selects UMC's Fabs for Production of World's First Hybrid Analog/Digital TV Decoder Chip

Micronas leverages foundry's 0.18um mixed-signal technology

Freiburg (Germany), and Hsinchu City (Taiwan), October 8, 2001 - Micronas, the Germany-based IC developer, today announced that it has chosen the world-leading semiconductor foundry, UMC (NYSE: UMC) for the production of its MDE 9500 IC, the industry's first hybrid analog/digital TV decoder. The MDE 9500 is the flagship of Micronas' mixed-signal decoder family and will use UMC's 0.18 micron technology to target the upcoming hybrid digital/analog TV market. Micronas is intending to utilize a host of UMC's advanced technology resources, including mixed-signal transistors and high-density memory solutions. In addition, UMC and Micronas are working on further leveraging embedded DRAM technology for a multi-dimensional approach to meet the demanding high-performance graphics generation requirements mandatory for Integrated Digital Television (IDTV) applications.

"We selected UMC as our foundry partner for the production of advanced ICs - such as the MDE 9500 - to target consumer markets," says Hans Schwendner, managing director Micronas Munich GmbH and vice president business operations of the Micronas group. "UMC gives us the advantage of high-quality processes with a range of supporting technologies in order to extend one IC product towards a family of integrated system solutions."

Felix Hu, vice-president of Europe Operations at UMC says, "All indicators point to tremendous market potential for emerging IDTV applications, and Micronas has shown its initiative to becoming a key player in this segment with the MDE 9500 chip. UMC is pleased to be able to play a significant part of this consumer movement toward Digital/Analog TV by providing the leading-edge technology necessary to drive these high-performance applications."

Cahners In-Stat Group predicts that the global market for digital TVs will reach over US$4 billion by 2004, up from $800 million in 2000.The MDE 9500 digital TV engine is targeting this market by enabling TV manufacturers to develop and build cost-effective digital TV sets for consumer applications while remaining backward-compatible to existing analog TV infrastructure. The introduction of the multimedia home platform (MHP) standard will further drive consumers to invest in interactive TV receivers - as long as they understand the stability and future security of their investment.

About the MDE 9500 chip
The MDE 9500 mixed-signal decoder family combines all of the network-independent digital signal process tasks of digital receivers while also supporting analog video processing. The high-performance graphic system supports all DVB recommendations, embedded TV applications and upcoming services like interactive TV. Furthermore, the chip features interfaces to address external devices such as IEEE 1394 link layer and ATA/IDE hard-disk drives. The interfaces and the system partitioning are adjustable to different TV systems enabling the manufacturers to build up complete system solutions.

The MDE 9500 also meets the requirements of the multimedia home platform (MHP) standard. MHP will enable a fully horizontal digital TV market by defining an open and standardized programming interface for interactive TV applications. A unified market of MHP receivers, editing tools and content creation resources will provide economies of scale and a considerable market potential to all involved players. The MDE 9500 offers a platform that meets all the MHP requirements.

About Micronas
Micronas (SWX: MASN, Neuer Markt Frankfurt: MNSN), a semiconductor company group with worldwide operations, is a leading supplier of cutting-edge IC and sensor system solutions for consumer electronics, multimedia and automotive electronics. The holding is headquartered in Zurich (Switzerland). Currently, the Micronas group employs over 1500 people. In 2000, it generated over CHF 490 Million in sales. For more information on Micronas and its products, please visit www.micronas.com.

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