Brion Receives Wall Street Journal Tech Innovation Award.

Brion's Tachyon System for Computational Lithography Recognized Among the Leading Technological Innovations of 2006

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Brion Technologies, the pioneer and leader in Lithography-Driven Design & Manufacturing[TM], announced today that its Tachyon computational lithography system was a runner-up in the semiconductor category of the Wall Street Journal's 2006 Technology Innovation Awards. The Journal received more than 600 entries from two dozen countries for this year's competition, now in its sixth year.

"We are very honored to receive recognition from the Technology Innovation Award judges' panel and the Wall Street Journal," said Eric Chen, chief executive officer of Brion. "We are particularly pleased that the panel recognizes that Tachyon's use of an image-based hardware-software combination is a true innovation in the emerging field of computational lithography. Recent advances in lithography and imaging technologies will be useless without accurate chip designs that are readily manufacturable."

A panel of judges, representing industry members as well as research and academic institutions, chose the top three award winners, 12 category winners and 37 runners-up. Judges considered whether the applicant's technology truly represents a breakthrough over conventional methods, rather than just an incremental improvement, according to the Wall Street Journal. The panel considered innovative technologies in 11 other categories, in addition to semiconductor technology: biotech and medical, consumer electronics, energy and power, the environment, materials and other base technologies, medical devices, IT security and privacy, facilities security, software, technology design, and wireless.

Brion was chosen as one of the five award winners in the semiconductor category from among 11 finalists. Also among this year's semiconductor recipients was the IBM STI Design Center and its Cell Broadband Engine (a collaboration between IBM, Sony and Toshiba), featuring a "supercomputer on a chip." Fujitsu Labs, QD Laser and the University of Tokyo were also awarded for their collective efforts in quantum-dot lasers, nano-size semiconductor particles that serve as light emitters for communications applications.

This is the fourth such award that Brion has received this year. In July of this year, R&D Magazine named Brion as a recipient in its annual R&D 100 Awards. Prior to this Brion's Tachyon RDI system was named as a Semiconductor International Editors' Choice Best Product, one of only 20 such awards given annually. In February the company was also named a finalist in the prestigious 2006 Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards, presented by EE Times magazine.

Brion will receive its Technology Innovation Award from the Wall Street Journal at an awards dinner on October 17 at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif. The dinner is part of Dow Jones VentureWire's Emerging Ventures conference.

About Brion Technologies

Brion Technologies, Inc. is the pioneer and leader in Lithography-Driven Design & Manufacturing([TM]). Founded in 2002, the privately held company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Brion's Tachyon[TM] platform, a highly accurate and ultra-fast OPC and OPC verification engine, enables a unique set of capabilities that address the interrelated challenges of design, photomask making and wafer printing in semiconductor lithography. With more than 125 employees, the company leads the worldwide market for optical proximity correction (OPC) verification, and is rapidly expanding in the OPC market. For further information, visit Brion Technologies' Web site at www.brion.com or call [phone].

Lithography-Driven Design & Manufacturing and Tachyon are trademarks of Brion Technologies, Inc.