Brion Working With Partners to Build Design-for-Manufacturing Network; Expansion of Its Worldwide Team.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Brion Technologies, the pioneer in Lithography-Driven Design & Manufacturing(TM), today announced that it has experienced considerable growth in the past year and a half, and is working with technology partners to participate in many areas of the semiconductor creation flow, from design to actual manufacturing and wafer metrology. As a result of this growth the company is adding industry veterans in key leadership positions in marketing, business development, sales and field operations.

Brion is working with a number of leading companies providing design and manufacturing technologies and products to the semiconductor industry on the best ways to address various steps of the semiconductor creation flow and enable its customers to design for manufacturing, expedite time-to-market and improve chip yield. "We're excited about the growth we are experiencing," said Eric Chen, chief executive officer of Brion. "As leading-edge chip manufacturing moves from the 90nm node down to 65nm and 45nm designs, it is becoming evident that design-related or systematic defects are becoming increasingly the limiter of chip yield and time-to-market. As the industry's leading provider of full-chip, full process window lithography modeling, simulation and optimization with our Tachyon system, we're providing a platform on which a compelling design-for-manufacturing (DFM) network can be built together with our partners."

As a result of this growth, Brion has expanded its team, with more additions planned in the near future. The most recent new hires bring industry veterans to Brion, with the appointment of Neal Callan as senior director of product marketing, Jim Burdorf as a director of product engineering and Paul Hsieh as director of Asia sales and field operations. Brion also promoted existing managers to new positions to support its global sales and field operations, and gave additional global responsibilities to the chairman of its Japanese subsidiary.

Brion announced that Tadahiro Takigawa, chairman of the board of wholly owned Japanese subsidiary Brion Technologies KK, would also assume the role of corporate executive for technology and business development for Brion Technologies Inc. In this new role of increased responsibilities, Takigawa will seek to broaden the scope and deepen the footprint of Brion's businesses in the semiconductor supply chain.

As senior director of product marketing, Callan will lead and manage all aspects of the Tachyon OPC+ product line. Prior to joining Brion, Callan, a 19-year industry veteran, was a senior director in new business development at Applied Materials responsible for yield and DFM business opportunities. Prior to Applied Materials, Callan spent the majority of his career at LSI Logic in lithography-related positions.

As a director of product engineering Burdorf will oversee Brion's OPC+ product engineering group. Tachyon OPC+, Brion's optical proximity correction (OPC) and resolution enhancement technology (RET) product introduced earlier this year is experiencing considerable market traction, building on the company's leading market presence in model-based OPC verification. Burdorf has been a notable contributor to the lithography industry for 18 years, with experience spanning OPC, reticle inspection to photomask R&D. He held prior positions at Synopsys, KLA-Tencor, Micron and Takumi.

Brion also announced the promotions of Christian Desplat to vice president of worldwide sales and field operations, and Doug Burnham to director of US and Europe sales and field operations, both with over 20 years of semiconductor industry experience in sales, marketing, applications and research and development. Paul Hsieh joins the company as director of Asia sales and field operations, bringing over 10 years of sales and account management experience.

With these latest additions Brion currently has more than 120 employees across the globe, and expects to continue the rapid expansion. Since the inception of the company, Brion has produced 50 of its Tachyon systems, hardware-accelerated, image-based data and simulation engines designed for the demanding tasks of lithography modeling and database handling.

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 data and simulation engine, enables a unique set of capabilities that address the interrelated challenges of design, photomask making and wafer printing in semiconductor microlithography. The company leads the worldwide emerging market of optical proximity correction (OPC) verification, and is expanding its product portfolio. 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.