Chip Express Names Stephen E. McMinn Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing; ASIC Industry Veteran to Drive the Company's Marketing Strategy and Continued Growth.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 14, 1999--

Chip Express Corporation today announced the appointment of Stephen E. McMinn to the position of Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

McMinn comes to Chip Express with more than 20 years of marketing, sales and management experience in the semiconductor industry. He will assume the post immediately and report directly to Alex Leupp, Chip Express President and CEO.

Most recently, McMinn was Vice President of North American Sales for Toshiba America Electronic Components, where he worked for the last eight years. In this position, he was responsible for management of the company's sales activities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, including Rep companies, distributors and direct employees.

Prior to that, McMinn worked for the start-up Vertex Semiconductor where he served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, managing the strategic and tactical marketing as well as directing the efforts of the regional sales offices and a network of manufacturer's representatives. Vertex was acquired by Toshiba in 1991, and McMinn had the responsibility to develop a product strategy to incorporate the Vertex product lines into a comprehensive Toshiba market offering.

"Steve has demonstrated his ability to build sales organizations and marketing groups from the ground up and lead them to achieving the imperative goals," said Leupp. "At Chip Express, we will utilize his extensive experience to increase our customer base worldwide and forge long-term relationships with companies that can use our ASIC solution to enhance their products with shorter time-to-market. Steve will be instrumental in developing the marketing strategy that will take advantage of the company's strengths and fuel its growth."

McMinn began his career as a Product Engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor. Afterward, he joined Gould/AMI Semiconductor where he first held various engineering and engineering management positions. He later served as Silicon Foundry P&L Director, followed by Director of ASIC Market and Director of Strategic Marketing. Moving to Siemens Components as Director of ASIC Marketing, McMinn was involved in starting the U.S.-based ASIC efforts for Siemens, including initial staffing, business plan development and product launch campaign.

"My focus will be on furthering Chip Express' leadership in ASIC time-to-market, identifying emerging markets and leveraging our unique technology to grow the company. I see an opportunity to capitalize on the business that large standard cell ASIC suppliers are not addressing and the low-end FPGA companies cannot service," said McMinn.

McMinn received his BSEE from Louisiana State University -- Baton Rouge, Louisiana (1977) and MBA from Santa Clara University -- Santa Clara, California (1981).

Chip Express Corporation is the world leader in "Time-to-Market Solution(R)" for high-performance, high-density ASIC devices. Chip Express provides the industry's fastest-turn ASIC products, including one-day Laser Programmable Gate Array prototypes utilizing the QuICk(R) laser micro-machining system; one-week initial production utilizing its innovative OneMask(R) process to personalize a single wafer at a time; and a smooth transition to its TwoMask(tm)/HardArray(tm) technology for cost competitive high volume production in as short as one month.

Chip Express is a privately held corporation, founded in the U.S. in 1989. From its headquarters in Santa Clara, Chip Express services leading-edge computer, communications and military companies worldwide including Hewlett Packard, Intel, 3Com, Sun, Cisco Systems, Bay Networks, Lockheed Martin, Hughes Aircraft, and National Semiconductor.

Note to Editors: Photo available upon request.