Cadence and UMC Sign Agreement to Streamline Wireless Design in the Fabless Market; Companies to Develop Comprehensive Wireless Solution Using the Cadence Virtuoso Platform and UMC's RFCMOS Manufacturing Expertise.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN) (Nasdaq:CDN) and UMC (NYSE:UMC) (TSE:2303), a world-leading semiconductor foundry, today announced a collaborative agreement to develop a comprehensive reference solution for complex wireless designs. The jointly-developed reference solution, which will be based on the Cadence(R) Virtuoso(R) custom design platform and targets UMC's RFCMOS processes, will also include a reference design and other key technology from UMC.

Growing demand for analog / mixed-signal and RF devices for wireless applications, such as WLAN 802.11, UWB, and Bluetooth, is driving the need to integrate these various components into a single SoC and accelerate the path to wireless design. This new collaboration addresses these challenges by combining UMC's RFCMOS process technologies to deliver RF capabilities and Cadence's analog / mixed-signal and RF design tools and flow integration. The collaboration's first key milestone -- the verification of the reference design -- has been completed using the Virtuoso platform.

"Aggressive consumer demand for wireless products makes it critical for our customers to achieve silicon success quickly and meet market demand," said Patrick T. Lin, chief SoC architect, system and architecture support at UMC. "By leveraging Cadence's Virtuoso platform with UMC's advanced manufacturing capabilities, we can provide a streamlined methodology for the design, simulation and integration of different components into complex SoCs used in wireless devices."

The reference design consists of Digital Baseband Physical Layer Blocks, Mixed-Mode 1GHz AD/DA converter blocks, RF components, along with several pieces of enabling intellectual property (IP) from UMC. The companies plan to complete development of the reference flow over the next several months and then harden the reference design into silicon. Customers will ultimately be able to access a complete wireless reference design package from UMC. The package will include the reference design, the design flow, compatible process design kit (PDK) and silicon-validation results from the reference design.

"The cost, performance and power requirements of today's advanced wireless devices are driving greater functional integration, leading to sophisticated and integrated SoC solutions," said Jan Willis, senior vice president of Industry Alliances at Cadence. "Our collaboration with UMC addresses these challenges by providing customers with a comprehensive technology solution to help shorten their product development time for wireless designs."

About UMC

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, and mixed signal/RFCMOS. UMC is also a leader in 300mm manufacturing; Fab 12A in Taiwan and Singapore-based Fab 12i are both in volume production for a variety of customer products. UMC employs approximately 10,500 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.

About Cadence

Cadence enables global electronic-design innovation and plays an essential role in the creation of today's integrated circuits and electronics. Customers use Cadence software and hardware, methodologies, and services to design and verify advanced semiconductors, printed circuit boards and systems used in consumer electronics, networking and telecommunications equipment, and computer systems. Cadence reported 2004 revenues of approximately $1.2 billion, and has approximately 5,000 employees. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world to serve the global electronics industry. More information about the company, its products, and services is available at www.cadence.com.

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