UMC First Pure-Play Foundry to Join the X Initiative

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., December 8, 2003 - The X Initiative today announced that world-leading semiconductor foundry UMC (NYSE: UMC, TSE: 2303) is the first pure-play foundry to become a member of the semiconductor supply-chain consortium. UMC is now ready to accept X Architecture designs for fabrication at the 180-nm, 150-nm, and 130-nm process nodes. The availability of production fabrication for X Architecture designs is a critical step toward broad commercial adoption of this new chip-wiring architecture.

The X Architecture represents a new way of orienting a chip’s microscopic interconnecting wires using diagonal pathways, as well as the traditional right angle, or “Manhattan,” configuration. By enabling designs with significantly less wire and fewer vias (the connectors between wiring layers), the X Architecture can provide significant, simultaneous improvement in chip performance, power consumption and cost.

“UMC is focused on providing innovative solutions, and the X Architecture offers significant benefits to our customers,” said Patrick T. Lin, chief SoC architect at UMC. “We are very pleased to take a leadership position as the first pure-play foundry to join the X Initiative and are ready to accept the X Architecture designs for production.”

The pre-production design-to-silicon roadmap for the X Architecture laid out by the X Initiative in 2002 was recently completed, with the announcement of functional silicon results (see “Toshiba Produces First Functional Silicon Using the X Architecture,” news release dated October 8, 2003). The focus of the X Initiative’s collaborative supply-chain preparation is now to enable broad adoption of the X Architecture for production manufacturing at both current (130nm, 90nm) and future (65nm, 45nm and below) manufacturing nodes. First production chips are expected in 2004.

“Pure-play foundry support for X Architecture designs is a critical milestone toward the goal of broad commercial adoption,” noted Aki Fujimura, X Initiative steering group member and CTO, new business incubations at Cadence Design Systems, Inc. “By joining the X Initiative as its first member from the pure-play foundry sector, UMC has assumed a leadership role in advancing the commercial roadmap for the X Architecture.”

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 UMC is now in pilot 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.

The X Architecture, the first production-worthy approach to the pervasive use of diagonal interconnect, reduces the total interconnect, or wiring, on a chip by more than 20 percent and via-counts by more than 30 percent, resulting in simultaneous improvements in chip performance, power and cost. For the past 20 years, chip design has been primarily based on the de facto industry standard “Manhattan” architecture, named for its right-angle interconnects resembling a city-street grid. The X Architecture rotates the primary direction of the interconnect in the fourth and fifth metal layers by 45 degrees from a Manhattan architecture. The new architecture maintains compatibility with existing cell libraries, memory cells, compilers and IP cores by preserving the Manhattan geometry of metal layers one through three.

The X Initiative, a group of leading companies from throughout the semiconductor industry, is chartered with accelerating the availability and fabrication of the X Architecture, a revolutionary interconnect architecture based on the pervasive use of diagonal routing. The X Initiative’s five-year mission is to provide an independent source of education about the X Architecture, to facilitate support and fabrication of the X Architecture through the semiconductor industry supply chain, and to survey usage of the X Architecture to track its adoption. Representing leaders spanning the entire design-to-silicon supply chain, X Initiative members include: Applied Materials, Inc.; ARM; Artisan Components, Inc.; ASML Netherlands B.V.; Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE: CDN); Dai Nippon Printing (DNP); DuPont Photomasks, Inc.; Etec Systems, Inc., an Applied Materials, Inc. company; GDA Technologies, Inc.; HPL Technologies, Inc.; Hoya Corporation; IN2FAB Technology Ltd.; JEOL, Ltd.; KLA-Tencor Corporation; Leica Microsystems AG; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.; MicroArk Co. Ltd.; Monterey Design Systems, Inc.; Nikon Corporation; NuFlare Technology Inc.; PDF Solutions, Inc.; Photronics, Inc.; Prolific Inc.; RUBICAD Corporation; Sagantec; Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.; Silicon Logic Engineering, Inc.; SiliconMap, LLC.; Silicon Valley Research Inc.; STMicroelectronics; Sycon Design, Inc.; Tensilica, Inc.; Toppan Printing Co.; Toshiba Corporation; Trecenti Technologies, Inc.; UMC; Virage Logic, Inc.; Virtual Silicon Technology, Inc.; and Zygo Corporation. Membership is open to all companies throughout the semiconductor supply chain. Materials can be found at www.xinitiative.org

This release contains forward-looking statements (including, without limitation, information regarding semiconductor design, production and performance improvements resulting from the X Architecture, the compatibility of the X Architecture with current technology, the future success of X Architecture technology and the ability of certain of the X Initiative members’ to support the X Architecture) that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the results of X Initiative members and other events to differ materially from managements’ current expectations. Actual results and events may differ materially due to a number of factors including, among others: future strategic decisions made by the X Initiative members; failure of the X Architecture to enable the production of designs that are feasible and competitive with current designs or future alternatives; future strategic decisions made by X Initiative members or others that inhibit the development of the X Architecture; demand for advanced semiconductors that are developed using the X Architecture; cost feasibility of the production of semiconductors designed using the X Architecture; and the rapid pace of technological change in the semiconductor industry. The matters discussed in this press release also involve risks and uncertainties described in the most recent filings of the X Initiative members with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The X Initiative members, individually or collectively, assume no obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this release.