Chiba, Japan, Sep. 18, 2003 - UMC JAPAN (UMCJ), - the Japan-based subsidiary of world leading semiconductor foundry UMC (NYSE: UMC) and the country’s only pure-play foundry, today announced that it has decided to expand its technology and manufacturing capabilities by investing US $45 million in UMC’s 300mm affiliate in Singapore, UMCi. The investment will secure access to UMCi’s capacity for up to 2000 wafers/month, allowing UMCJ to better serve its Japanese customers by providing access to the world’s most cutting-edge process technologies manufactured on advanced 300mm wafers.

UMCi is currently in pilot production, and will focus on manufacturing products based on UMC’s 0.13um and below technologies when the facility moves to full production. UMC is currently in 0.13um volume production for numerous customers including Japan-based Ricoh, with excellent manufacturing yields being achieved for their GPU chip. UMC has also delivered the foundry industry’s first working 90nm customer products.

UMC’s extensive 300mm experience has allowed the company to realize impressive 300mm yields for the volume production of its most advanced products at its Fab 12A in Tainan, Taiwan. This knowledge and experience is currently being applied to the rapid production ramp up of UMCi, which is also implementing single wafer processing to reduce lot size and cycle time. Production volume for the state of the art automated facility is expected to reach 10,000 wafers by the end of 2004.

“Our Japanese customers will benefit greatly from this investment,” said H.J. Wu, president of UMCJ and also president of UMC’s Japan Business Group. “Through this arrangement, UMCJ will now be able to provide them with both advanced 300mm production capacity as well as leading edge process technologies. In order to maintain the familiar service our Japanese customers are accustomed to and to facilitate smooth communication, UMCJ will send several engineers to work in UMCi on our customer projects. Earnings from our UMCi activities will be counted as UMCJ revenue. When this business grows to a certain momentum level, we will pursue a local 300mm fab to further support the future business and technology requirements of Japan, the world’s most advanced digital consumer electronics country.”

UMCi is located on a 12 hectare (30 acres) site in Singapore’s Pasir Ris Wafer Park. Singapore is a rapidly emerging global IC manufacturing hub, and its well-established infrastructure and friendly government policies have attracted investment from the world’s leading semiconductor companies.

UMC JAPAN (UMCJ) is Japan's first and only dedicated-silicon foundry, which provides advanced technologies and semiconductor manufacturing for customers on a contract basis. The company is a subsidiary of Taiwan based UMC (United Microelectronics Corp.). Further information can be found at http://www.umcj.com/english.