Taiwan and San Jose, Calif., - August 19, 2002 - Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE: CDN) the world's leading supplier of electronic design products and services, and UMC (NYSE: UMC), a world leading pure-play foundry, today unveiled a joint initiative to help customers facilitate the smooth transition to fabrication through physical design verification using Cadence's most advanced technology for nanometer designs. Under this initiative, CadenceR Assura? physical verification solution DRC decks for 0.25-, 0.18- and 0.13-micron CMOS logic technologies are now available for download free-of-charge on UMC's "My UMC" customer website. Easy access to high-quality, foundry-level, silicon-proven rule decks, saves customers' time and resources, thus enabling customers to remain focused on their nanometer chip designs.

"At Cadence we believe customer success is central to our core values," said Charlie Huang, vice president of marketing for Cadence IC Solutions. "This initiative will go a long way toward helping our customers handle Design for Manufacture (DFM) bottlenecks and enhance time-to-market for their products, especially those with digital, mixed-signal and RF nanometer designs. Another significant highlight of this initiative is that it demonstrates the growing acceptance of Assura as a signoff tool among designers, as well as foundries."

"Our agreement with Cadence to post the Assura rule decks on UMC's web site will enable our customers to leverage more effectively UMC's foundry services. As a pure-play foundry, UMC is committed to integrating with our customers' design chains, in order to provide a seamless transition from design to manufacturing," said Tai Sheng Feng, vice president, Design Support Division, United Microelectronics.

About Cadence Cadence is the largest supplier of electronic design technologies, methodology services, and design services. Cadence solutions are used to accelerate and manage the design of semiconductors, computer systems, networking and telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, and a variety of other electronics-based products. IEEE, the world's largest technical professional society, honored Cadence with its 2002 Corporate Innovation Recognition award. With approximately 5,500 employees and 2001 revenues of approximately $1.4 billion, Cadence has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN. More information about the company, its products and services is available at www.cadence.com.

Cadence and the Cadence logo are registered trademarks and Assura is a registered trademark of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.