SAN JOSE, Calif., Bluetooth Americas, December 9, 2003 - UMC (NYSE: UMC), a leading global semiconductor foundry and Silicon Wave today announced that the foundry’s 0.18 micron RF CMOS process technology is being used to manufacture Silicon Wave’s single-chip Bluetooth IC, the SiW3500. The SiW3500, introduced in November, is the newest addition to Silicon Wave’s portfolio of single-chip solutions, which includes the SiW3000 and SiW1712 that are in full-volume production at UMC and shipping to multiple customers today. Samples of the SiW3500 are slated for availability in January 2004 from RF Micro Devices (Nasdaq: RFMD), Silicon Wave's global channel partner for its CMOS single-chip radio processor and stand-alone radio modem Bluetooth solutions. The new SiW3500 single-chip solution will be demonstrated in the RFMD/Silicon Wave Booth #128 at the San Jose Convention Center.

“The SiW3500 UltimateBlue IC is designed to deliver superior RF performance while lowering our customer’s costs and accelerating their time to market,” said Steve Brown, vice president of business development and product marketing for Silicon Wave. “UMC has a proven track-record in manufacturing sophisticated products targeted to the communications market, ensuring a reliable, cost-effective supply of high-performance chips to our customers.”

Fu Tai Liou, head of the America Business Group at UMC, commented, “Smooth integration of UMC’s RF technologies with Silicon Wave’s designs to successfully power their UltimateBlue Bluetooth solution requires design knowledge, cooperation between all development partners and manufacturing expertise. We are delighted that our close collaboration with Silicon Wave has resulted in this offering, and that our close support and manufacturing expertise were key factors in delivering their product within their target timeframe.”

The SiW3500 UltimateBlue Bluetooth IC features a direct conversion architecture that delivers low-spurious emissions and excellent RF blocking characteristics, making it the superior choice for RF hostile environments within mobile phones. Innovative on-chip RF matching makes it considerably easier to integrate the SiW3500 into mobile phones by simplifying PCB design and reducing development effort. The SiW3500 is a platform that can execute additional upper layer protocol stack and application software functions, including additional complex audio processing algorithms such as noise cancellation without a separate DSP. The chip is Bluetooth Version 1.2 compliant, including mandatory and optional features such as Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH), and extended SCO (eSCO).

Some of the statements in the foregoing announcement are forward looking within the meaning of the U.S. Federal Securities laws, including statements about future outsourcing, wafer capacity, technologies, business relationships and market conditions. Investors are cautioned that actual events and results could differ materially from these statements as a result of a variety of factors, including conditions in the overall semiconductor market and economy; acceptance and demand for products; and technological and development risks.

Based in San Diego, Silicon Wave is a leading provider of low-power, highly integrated RF communication system components for the global Bluetooth wireless market. Silicon Wave products and services include single-chip radio processors, stand-alone radio modems, baseband processors, software solutions and a baseband IP licensing program. Founded in 1997, the company was the first to deliver a fully qualified, single-chip radio modem for Bluetooth communications and first to achieve Bluetooth Specification Version 1.1 qualification for its products. Silicon Wave is an Associate Member of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. The company's Web site is located at www.siliconwave.com.

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 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.