Singapore, March 2, 2004 - UMCi, the Singapore-based 300mm subsidiary of world-leading semiconductor foundry UMC (NYSE: UMC), today announced the start of full-scale production following the successful fabrication of advanced ICs for three separate customers. UMCi, Singapore's first 300mm foundry, has already demonstrated good wafer yields for these leading edge copper interconnect-based chips and is moving them to volume production. The products include chips for the FPGA and wireless communication sectors.

Chris Chi, president of UMCi, said, "Our decision to establish UMCi in Singapore has paid off with this noteworthy milestone. Simply put, we have succeeded in bringing the world’s most advanced IC foundry facility to full-scale production. Our customers will soon realize the tremendous productivity advantages that our state-of-the-art 300mm fab promises to deliver."

UMCi installed its Backend-of-line (BEOL) copper equipment in January of 2003, and shortly afterwards, backend copper processing of 300mm wafers signified the start of pilot production. The front-end-of-line (FEOL) equipment installation was completed at the end of 2003. Today's milestone marks UMCi’s transition to full production.

The UMCi facility is a second-generation 300mm fab that utilizes the industry's most advanced automation systems and equipment to maximize production efficiency. In addition, UMCi incorporates state-of-the-art single wafer processing, which offers greatly reduced cycle times and increased flexibility over traditional batch processing.

UMCi has leveraged the experience and knowledge from UMC's Fab 12A, which has been in production since 2001, to achieve the favorable wafer yields realized at this very early stage of production. UMC's two 300mm fabs firmly position UMC as the clear industry leader for 300mm manufacturing.

UMC (NYSE: UMC, TSE: 2303) is a leading global semiconductor foundry that manufactures advanced process ICs for applications spanning every major sector of the semiconductor industry. UMC delivers cutting-edge foundry technologies that enable sophisticated system-on-chip (SOC) designs, including 90nm copper, 0.13um copper, embedded DRAM, and mixed signal/RFCMOS. UMC is also a leader in 300mm manufacturing; Fab 12A in Taiwan is currently in volume production for a variety of customer products, while Singapore-based UMCi has just entered volume production. UMC employs over 8,500 people worldwide and has offices in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Europe, and the United States. UMC can be found on the web at http://www.umc.com.