Hsinchu, July 2, 2003 - UMC, a world leading semiconductor foundry (NYSE: UMC) and High Bandwidth Access, Inc. (HBA), developer of advanced FIFO and specialty memory devices for high capacity broadband networks, today announced the successful prototyping of HBA's high speed IC based on the foundry's 90-nm process. The two engineering teams achieved working silicon on their first pass, signifying the close collaboration between the companies to successfully integrate HBA's design with UMC's most advanced process. Volume production for HBA's IC is expected later this year.
Steven Huang, chairman and CEO of HBA, commented, "We are proud to cooperate with UMC on this 90-nm ZeBL SRAM design. Our ability to produce working samples on first-pass silicon is a strong testimony to the capabilities of HBA's memory design team, and confirms UMC's proven track record as the foundry industry leader in the delivery of the most advanced production technologies. We anticipate that leveraging UMC's leadership at 90-nm will further boost the competitiveness of our products and greatly increase our revenues from Sync SRAM sales to the billion-dollar Telecom & Data communications market."
UMC's 90-nm HS (High speed) process enables the SRAM prototype to deliver extremely high performance while maintaining a low operational current and a core voltage range of 0.8V-1.4V. The IC paves the way for future SoC integration and is suited for HBA's new high density ZeBL (Zero Bus Latency) SRAM family. In addition, the two companies have validated key analog and digital IPs for UMC's 90-nm process.
Jackson Hu, president of the New Business Development Group at UMC, said, "UMC's partnership strategy played a fundamental role in the development of this 90-nm IC, as both companies worked very closely together to accomplish first silicon success. We are pleased to realize the fruits of our hard work with HBA with the delivery of this 90-nm prototype, and look forward to continuing our cooperation with them to further develop their product line."
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