UMCi Holds Topping Off Ceremony for 300-mm Semiconductor Fab in Singapore; Important Milestone Towards January 2003 Equipment Installation.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 11, 2002

UMCi, the Singapore-based joint venture between the world leading semiconductor foundry UMC (NYSE:UMC), Infineon Technologies AG (IFX), and EDBI, today held the topping off ceremony for its 300-mm wafer fab in the Pasir Ris Wafer Fab Park in Singapore. Robert Tsao, Chairman of UMC and UMCi, and UMCi President Chris Chi hosted the event. The "topping off" ceremony was held to commemorate the completion of the roofing structure of the fab, an important milestone in the completion of the civil construction stage of the facility. UMCi is now on a new schedule to install production equipment in January 2003 in preparation for pilot production in the following quarter.

"We are extremely pleased to be completing this stage of the construction for the world's most advanced semiconductor fab. The high quality infrastructure in Singapore has more than met our expectations. We expect UMCi to be entering production just in time to meet the rising demand for foundry services that take advantage of UMC's state-of-the-art process technology, the technology jointly developed with Infineon, and UMC's 300-mm manufacturing experience," said Robert Tsao, Chairman.

Investment in the facility is expected to reach US $3.6 billion, with a total planned capacity of 40,000 wafers per month. Production will begin in the second quarter of 2003 and will focus on large die-size system-on-chip (SOC) chips utilizing UMC's advanced 130-nm (0.13-um) and 90-nm copper/low k process technologies.

In preparation for the operation of the new facility, UMCi will hold a career fair recruiting event on May 11th and 12th. The event will be held from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. on each of the days at Singapore's Conrad Hotel. For more information, please visit www.umc.com/umci/careers.

About UMC

UMC (NYSE:UMC)(TSE: 2303) is a world-leading semiconductor foundry that manufactures advanced process ICs for applications spanning every major sector of the semiconductor industry. UMC delivers the cutting-edge foundry technologies that enable sophisticated system-on-chip (SOC) designs, including 0.13-micron copper/low k, embedded DRAM, and mixed signal/RFCMOS. In addition, UMC is a leader in 300mm manufacturing with three strategically located 300mm fabs to serve our global customer base: Fab 12A in Taiwan, UMCi in Singapore (completion in 2002), and AU Pte. Ltd., a joint venture facility with AMD also located in Singapore (production in 2005). UMC employs over 8,500 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.