U-Chip Partners With Ansoft for High-Performance, Low-Power IC Design; Nexxim Circuit Simulator Enables Successful Tapeout of Multi-Million Gate Flat-Cell ROM Device.

HSINCHU, Taiwan -- Taiwanese semiconductor memory specialist U-Chip and Ansoft Corporation (Nasdaq:ANST) jointly announce their partnership for integrated circuit (IC) design and simulation. The power of Ansoft's Nexxim(TM) circuit simulator is essential for U-chip to predict transient behavior and power consumption of their embedded read only memory (ROM) IC designs.

"Our customers require high-density memory devices operating at low core voltage and low power," said Juei-Lung Chen, General Manager at U-Chip. "Nexxim is the only simulator that provides the capacity, reliability and transistor-level accuracy for the large circuits we design."

Modern embedded ROM devices find application in many electronic products and provide several megabytes of storage using many millions of transistors. The basic building block of the memory device is the individual memory cell. Detailed and accurate characterization of memory-cell functionality at the transistor level is critical to ensure timing and minimize power utilization.

U-Chip evaluated the performance of several commercial simulators before selecting Nexxim. Benchmarks performed on a memory cell with 47,500 transistors established the clear advantages provided by Ansoft technology with results that matched measurements within 1 percent. One well-known SPICE simulator, while providing transistor-level accuracy, failed to handle the large transistor count. Two commonly used fast-SPICE simulators offered the capacity, but predicted incorrect DC solutions and distorted transient waveforms after the first few clock cycles. "We must have confidence in our circuit simulator before we can commit to silicon," says Juei-Lung Chen. "Fast-SPICE simulators are not fast at all if you end up re-spinning the chip."

"Nexxim's role in the successful tapeout of U-Chip's ROM device is a testament to the value our technology delivers to high-performance IC designers," says Dr. Mark Reichelt, Director of Nexxim R&D at Ansoft. "Nexxim's speed, capacity and accuracy are achieved through sophisticated new algorithms and numerical techniques."

About U-Chip Technology Corporation

U-Chip Technology Corporation provides a wide range of high-performance integrated circuits and semiconductor intellectual property. The company concentrates on ultra low-power embedded SRAM memory devices, micro-controllers and other analog devices. These products are used mainly in battery-operated portable devices, consumer electronics products and communications devices. U-Chip's comprehensive range of SRAM and analog products, combined with its leading-edge R&D team, designs and integrates solutions for customers with varying IC design needs. For more information, visit the U-Chip web site at http://www.u-chip.com.tw.

About Ansoft

Ansoft is a leading developer of high-performance electronic design automation (EDA) software. Engineers use Ansoft software to design state-of-the-art electronic products, such as cellular phones, Internet-access devices, broadband networking components and systems, integrated circuits (ICs), printed circuit boards (PCBs), automotive electronic systems and power electronics. Ansoft markets its products worldwide through its own direct sales force and has comprehensive customer-support and training offices throughout North America, Asia and Europe. To learn more, please visit www.ansoft.com.

About Nexxim

The Nexxim circuit simulator provides fast and accurate solutions for complex, high-performance analog and mixed-signal circuits. It combines the transistor-level simulation accuracy required for sensitive analog and wireless front-ends with the capacity to solve the complexities in modern mixed-signal integrated circuits. New numerical algorithms and advanced software engineering combine to deliver 10x to 100x improvement in simulation speed, accuracy and capacity compared to other commercial simulators. The dynamic link to HFSS(TM) electromagnetic-field solver provides on-chip passive, signal integrity, and IC package modeling. Nexxim's accuracy and capacity has been validated in both frequency-domain (including harmonic balance) and time-domain (transient). Customer benchmarks have ranged in complexity up to thousands of harmonics and hundreds of thousands of devices. For detailed information, please visit www.ansoft.com/products/hf/nexxim.