SUNNYVALE, Calif.—March 2, 1999 - UMC Group today announced that Edward Wan has joined the company as vice president of engineering. Wan will be in charge of establishing new processes to make it easy for chip developers to utilize UMC Group's fabs.

Jim Kupec, president of UMC Group (U.S.) noted, "Wan has an impressive background which we welcome to UMC Group. He brings EDA, Intellectual Property (IP) and semiconductor technology knowledge to the company. These are ideal credentials as all three market areas are important to our foundry business."

Edward Wan stated, "I am excited to join a company with industry leading process technology and world class manufacturing capacity. The company is playing a key role in accelerating the industry movement to develop strong linkages between independent IP developers, library suppliers, design services providers, and pure play foundries. UMC Group is well positioned to be the company of choice for advanced system-on-chip manufacturing and become the number one wafer foundry in the world."

Wan gained an extensive engineering management background through various positions at IP, EDA and semiconductor companies over the past 20 years. Before joining UMC Group, he was vice president of chip design services at Aspec Technology, a developer of IP components. Prior to this he was a vice president of Cadence Design System's Services Group, responsible for system-on-chip designs. Before this, he was vice president of North American engineering operations at LSI Logic Corporation. He also held other engineering management and marketing positions during his 14-year tenure with LSI Logic. Wan graduated from University of California, Berkeley where he received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and computer science.