Brion Technologies Opens Subsidiary in Japan; Taps Lithography Industry Veterans to Lead Brion Technologies KK.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Brion Technologies today launched its wholly owned subsidiary in Japan, Brion Technologies KK. Brion is the developer of Lithography-Driven Design & Manufacturing(TM) technologies, which are experiencing rapid market acceptance around the globe and specifically in Japan because they give customers unprecedented methods of addressing their most complex lithography challenges.

The new subsidiary enables Brion to offer greater design-for-manufacturing (DFM) support to customers in Japan, one of the world's most important regions for semiconductor manufacturing technology development, especially in the areas of device design, R&D, photomask production and lithography scanner manufacturing. Brion KK maintains headquarters in Tokyo.

Brion KK is led by a seasoned team of executives with experience in both the lithography and design automation arenas, including Tadahiro Takigawa as chairman of the board. A world-renowned lithography technologist and business executive, Takigawa spent 30 years with Toshiba Group and most recently led the electron beam mask writing system business for NuFlare Technology, a Toshiba Group company that has quickly earned a worldwide leading role in the electron beam mask writing system market. He is joined by design automation executive Noriaki Kikuchi as president of Japan operations and technology specialist Tatsuo Nishibe, an expert in resolution enhancement technology (RET) and optical proximity correction (OPC), two key aspects of lithographic DFM.

"Japan remains a strategically important region for semiconductor technology development. That's why we're moving quickly to ensure our customers have direct access to Brion's Lithography-Driven Design & Manufacturing(TM) technologies, which promise to help customers address the lithographic manufacturability challenges of RET/OPC designs," said Eric Chen, chief executive officer of Brion. "The launch of Brion KK also reflects a broader transition underway at Brion as we rapidly evolve from a Silicon Valley start-up company to an emerging global enterprise."

Brion KK will focus initial operations on the roll out of products for Brion's Tachyon platform, a hybrid computational lithography system that combines image-based lithography process simulation and polygon-based data manipulation to simulate and inspect 100 percent of the chip area. Thousands of production circuit layers have been processed by Tachyon systems worldwide.

Ten of the world's leading device makers have adopted Brion's Lithography-Driven Design & Manufacturing(TM) technologies for fast, accurate verification and inspection of RET/OPC designs, a must-have capability as device feature sizes shrink to 90nm and below. Brion supports customers in Asia, Europe and the United States directly and through distributor partnerships. The company employs over 85 people worldwide and plans to grow the Brion KK team with the addition of several applications specialists in the coming months.

About the Brion KK Executive Team

Tadahiro Takigawa -- During his tenure at Toshiba, Takigawa played a fundamental role in Toshiba's lithography development programs, leading efforts in the areas of optical lithography, mask technology including electron beam mask writing system and mask inspection system, and direct-write lithography. In addition to his leadership role as managing director at NuFlare, he managed mask technology development at ASET, a Japanese industry-wide R&D consortium on forward-looking semiconductor technologies. Takigawa holds 43 patents and has published dozens of papers on lithography technology development throughout his career. Among his many board affiliations, he served as executive director of the Japan Society of Applied Physics and director of The Vacuum Society of Japan. Takigawa holds bachelor's and master's degrees, as well as a doctorate in physics from the University of Tokyo.

Noriaki Kikuchi -- Kikuchi has been deeply connected to Japan's electronic design automation community for more than 17 years. He is the former president of Tera Systems Japan and has held high-level sales and field operations executive positions with EDA software firms Synopsys Japan and Seiko Instruments Inc. (SII). In his new position at Brion, Kikuchi will have overall responsibilities for the Japan operation, including sales, field application engineering and customer service.

Tatsuo Nishibe -- Nishibe comes to Brion KK with more than 25 years of experience in advanced lithography development, including 11 years of RET/OPC model building at Precim, Technology Modeling Associates (TMA) and Avant!. Most recently, he led Asia RET/OPC support activities for Synopsys Inc. He holds a master's degree in nuclear engineering from Kyoto University.

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. The combination of Brion's Tachyon(TM) platform, a highly accurate and ultra-fast data and simulation engine, and its Aerion(TM) technology for measuring aerial images at-resolution and in-scanner enables a unique set of capabilities to address the interrelated challenges of design, photomask making and wafer printing in semiconductor microlithography. For further information, visit Brion Technologies' web site at www.brion.com or call [phone].

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