TSMC Supports VSIA Tagging Standards On New Intellectual Property Business-to-Business Exchange; New IP Alliance Exchange Site Simplifies IP Procurement and Tracking.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

EDINBURGH, Scotland--(BUSINESS WIRE)---Oct. 23, 2000

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE:TSM), the world's leading semiconductor foundry, today announced support of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) tagging standards for IP on its new business-to-business exchange site at www.tsmc.com.

"TSMC is working with the VSIA to accelerate the use of IP for the benefit of designers and the semiconductor industry as a whole," said Peyman Kazemkhani, IP Alliance program director at TSMC. "VSIA's IP tagging standards are an important part of TMSC's B2B exchange environment, as they provide a standard tool for tracking the use and re-use of our IP Alliance members' valuable intellectual property." TSMC has aligned with VSIA to support stronger tagging standards to protect IP partners. VSIA also promotes re-use standards and qualification standards that set guidelines for formatting testing reports. Together, these standards combine to facilitate the customer implementation and qualification process for test and verification. TSMC's support of VSIA's standards for tagging IP helps create a safer and more efficient environment for customers seeking new intellectual property for their system-on-chip designs.

"VSIA believes that the most efficient way to protect the value of semiconductor intellectual property is to build industry consensus for a simple tagging standard and easy-to-follow re-use standards," said Ian Mackintosh, VSIA's Intellectual Property Protection Development Working Group Chair. "TSMC's support of this vision clearly demonstrates its commitment to its IP Alliance members and to protecting their significant technical investments."

About TSMC

TSMC is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry's leading process technology, library and IP options and other leading-edge foundry services. TSMC operates seven eight-inch wafer fabs (Fab 3, 4, 5, 6, TASMC, WSMC and WaferTech), and two six-inch wafer fabs (Fabs 1 and 2). In addition, the company has begun construction of a $1.2 billion joint venture fab with Philips Semiconductor, which is scheduled to open in Singapore in 2000. TSMC recently broke ground for its first 12-inch fabs, Fab 7 in Tainan and Fab 12 in Hsin-Chu. In 2000, TSMC expects to have the capacity for nearly 3.4 million 8-inch equivalent wafers. Fabrication processes offered by TSMC include CMOS logic, mixed-mode, volatile and non-volatile memory, and BiCMOS. TSMC's corporate headquarters are in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. More information about TSMC is available through the World Wide Web at http://www.tsmc.com.

About VSIA

The Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) is an open, international organization that includes representatives from all segments of the SoC industry: System houses, Semiconductor vendors, Electronic Design Automation (EDA) companies, and Intellectual Property (IP) providers. VSIA's vision is to dramatically accelerate system-chip development by specifying open standards that facilitate the mix and match of virtual components from multiple sources. Many companies have adopted the use of VSIA specifications, standards and documents. VSIA has wide industry participation with more than 170 member companies from around the world. Membership is open to any company with an interest in the development and promotion of open standards used in the design of System-on-Chip. For more information, visit the VSIA web site at www.vsi.org, or e-mail to [e-mail].

Editor's Notes: VSI Alliance is a trademark of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance.