Hsinchu, Taiwan, March 27, 2003 - UMC (NYSE: UMC, TSE: 2303), a world leading semiconductor foundry, today announced that the company has granted Xilinx Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) a Customer Appreciation Award for achieving key manufacturing milestones in the semiconductor industry: volume production of all advanced FPGA product lines on 300mm wafers using 0.13 and 0.15-micron process technology.

The award commemorates the significance of this industry achievement to both UMC and Xilinx. Xilinx is one of the highest volume purchasers of 300mm wafers in the world and the world's leading programmable logic solutions company with more than 60 percent FPGA market segment share.

The industry's most advanced FPGA product line - the Xilinx 0.13 Virtex-IIÔ Pro family - is in production at Fab 12A (Tainan, Taiwan), with excellent yields. By standardizing on 300mm wafers, Xilinx is delivering the maximum cost efficiencies to its customers by producing approximately 2.5 times as many devices per wafer compared to 200mm wafers. Additional Xilinx product families produced in volume by UMC are: Virtex-EÔ, Virtex-IIÔ, Virtex-II Pro and Spartan-IIEÔ FPGAs.

Fu Tai Liou, president of the America Business Group at UMC, said, "UMC is dedicated to working with our foundry partners to help them gain the maximum benefits from our advanced manufacturing. Xilinx and UMC have a long history of accomplishments together, and we are delighted that our close partnership has again resulted in success. With volume shipments of 0.15 and 0.13-micron products fabricated on 300mm wafers, Xilinx can now realize increased value by leveraging the combination of advanced process technologies with 300mm manufacturing to further maintain its leadership as a provider of the world's most leading-edge FPGA products."

Vincent Tong, vice president of Product Technology at Xilinx, noted, "Xilinx is delighted to accept this award in recognition of the latest achievement we've accomplished in collaboration with UMC. Together, we're continuing to drive the world's most advanced manufacturing technologies to deliver the lowest cost, highest performance FPGAs to our customers. Our commitment to 300mm wafer manufacturing with UMC, using most advanced process technologies - at 0.13-micron now and 0.90-nanometer in the near future - will continue to position our companies at the technology forefront in the semiconductor industry."

UMC is currently in volume production for a variety of 0.13um products targeting a wide range of applications, and is currently migrating more of these designs to 300mm wafer manufacturing. Revenues from 0.13um technology were 6% of total sales at the end of 2002.

Virtex-II FPGAs fundamentally redefined the programmable logic landscape, propelling FPGAs from the realm of glue logic into the realm of high performance programmable systems. Today, cumulative revenues from the Virtex-II series are estimated to exceed 40x that of the nearest competitor. The innovative Virtex-II IP-Immersion architecture enables integration of both hard and soft intellectual property (IP), enhanced system memory, and lightning-fast DSP performance, providing the best platform for advanced digital designs in the industry.

With eight devices produced on 300 mm, the Virtex-II Pro family is the world's first and only FPGA to offer integrated PowerPC embedded technology and 3.125 Gbps serial transceivers. Virtex-II Pro devices include these multiple PowerPC CPUs and multi-gigabit serial transceivers at no additional charge, providing unequaled capability and value for today's system design requirements. Xilinx is the only PLD provider to offer over 6,700 logic cells and 500K bits of embedded block memory plus an embedded PowerPC processor and four RocketIO serial transceivers for under $30*.

For high volume applications requiring lower densities, Xilinx offers the world's lowest cost FPGA product line, the Spartan-IIE family, also produced on 300 mm wafers. At up to 514 pins, Spartan-IIE FPGAs deliver the industry's lowest cost per pin, and most comprehensive programmable I/O support. Designers have 100 percent greater I/O capacity with Xilinx Spartan-IIE devices than any other competing FPGA solution in the same density range. With the industry's lowest cost per pin, designers currently using gate arrays or ASICs can easily migrate to Spartan FPGAs without the associated high NRE (non-recurring engineering) costs, long design cycles or risks.