O2IC Co., Ltd. Raises $8 Million from Venture Capital Group KGIF Limited Partnership and Strategic Investor the Dragon Group.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- O2IC Co., Ltd. Last week received a 2nd round of funding to complete its breakthrough McRAM memory technology development. O2IC is a fabless company with offices located in Santa Clara, California and Seoul, Korea. The Series A investment totaled $8 million and came after earlier rounds amounting to $5 million.

KGIF Limited Partnership, jointly managed by STIC Ventures, KDB Capital and SKFT (Israel), is one of the premier global venture capital firms sponsored by the Korea government, joined with O2IC's prior investor, the Dragon Group, in the new round. In addition, the company recently received a grant of technology funding from the Korean government. "We are excited to join the O2IC team and be a part of their product development plans," said Dr. Seung-Kwon Paek Director of STIC Ventures.

The new funds will be used to complete the development of O2IC's revolutionary new type of non-volatile memory technology called McRAM(R) and introduce products to the market later in 2005. O2IC has developed a fully functional 1M McRAM, proving the functionality of the innovative McRAM memory cell. The 1M McRAM uses a standard 0.25um 23 mask foundry CMOS Logic process with the addition of a simple proprietary process module, which does not impact manufacturability or reliability. The McRAM cell is scalable to geometries well below 0.05um.

McRAM is a non-volatile memory that incorporates the functions of FLASH and RAM into the same memory cell. "McRAM will have a major impact on how systems are designed in the future. O2IC achieved a technology breakthrough by achieving a low cell programming current of only 1uA, enabling the continuation of feature enrichment in power and space confined areas," said Dragon Group Founder and Chairman Dato Michael Loh.

McRAM can read and write like an SRAM, DRAM or PseudoSRAM and will retain data when the power is off, eliminating the need for multiple memory chips in systems that require both FLASH and RAM. Since McRAM replaces two chips with one, there is an obvious saving in system power consumption, area required and memory cost. In addition, the low programming current and internal architecture permit many bits to be programmed at the same time, dramatically reducing power dissipation, write time and test cost. McRAM's architecture also allows DMA inside the memory chip, freeing up the CPU at a huge savings in system throughput, while reducing power consumption. "Many of today's wireless applications are constrained by power dissipation write performance and space. McRAM is an enabling technology that will significantly reduce these limitations," said O2IC founder and McRAM inventor Dr. Kyu Choi.

Since McRAM combines the characteristics of RAM with Flash using a conventional logic process, it can be used as a stand-alone memory chip or as embedded memory core to replace the Flash and RAM commonly found in most products today. Applications include mobile phones, set-top boxes, DVD players, CD R/W, personal digital assistants, global positioning and a variety of other hand held devices. As the mobile telecommunications products become more feature rich, the market will demand products with smaller size, lower cost and longer battery life. McRAM is an enabling technology to meet these goals that addresses a multi-billion dollar market.

About O2IC

Founded in 2001 by Dr. Kyu Choi, O2IC is a privately held company. O2IC has developed a revolutionary new memory technology, McRAM, to support stand-alone memory applications as well as applications requiring embedded memory or memory incorporated in SoC applications. O2IC currently has various patents issued and filed in respect of its technology. O2IC's USA office is located at 3910 Freedom Circle Drive, Santa Clara California 95054. O2IC's Korea office is located at 4F Won Building 155-2, YeomRi-Dong, MaPo-Ku, Seoul, Korea.

About the Dragon Group

Founded in 1993 by Dato Michael Loh, the Dragon Group is a leading pan-Asia semiconductor design, development and distribution group with offices in all major markets in Asia.

About KGIF

Established in 2002, Korea Global IT Fund (KGIF) is one of the government initiated venture capital fund with a mandate to invest in start-ups with promising IT technologies with a potential for Nasdaq IPO. KGIF is jointly managed by STIC Ventures, KDB Capital, and SFKT of Israel. The partners leverage its networks and experiences to best support its portfolios to succeed.

Note for Editors:

McRAM(R) is an O2IC, Inc. trademark registered in the U.S. patent and Trademark Office. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.