Chartered Invests in Design Services Firm

-- Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing (Nasdaq:CHRT)(SGX:Chartered), one of the world’s top dedicated foundries, today announced it has made a strategic investment in SOCLE Technology Corporation, a Taiwan-based firm specializing in system-on-chip (SoC) design services and embedded platforms that reduce development time. Financial terms of the investment were not announced.

The investment will be used to support future growth and expansion by SOCLE. The two companies will collaborate on further developing and optimizing design services for customers targeting Chartered’s advanced manufacturing processes. SOCLE provides design services and development kits that span the chip design process from initial specification through design implementation to final chip assembly and testing.

SOCLE and Chartered have a long track record of implementing their mutual customers’ designs, with SOCLE offering development kits to reduce the time and effort in achieving working silicon for complex IC designs featuring embedded technology. The company is one of several qualified Chartered design services partners around the world.

“SOCLE has developed a strong expertise in helping customers develop complex SoC designs, and its embedded platforms are production-proven. Its experience in hardening ARM cores and developing ARM-based platforms is especially appealing to our customer base,” said Kay Chai “KC” Ang, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Chartered. “As an investment for Chartered, we believe SOCLE has a solid business model and is well-resourced to address new opportunities.”

“Chartered’s management experience and success in working with companies doing advanced IC design will be of great value to SOCLE as we plan our next phase of growth. We appreciate the confidence Chartered has demonstrated in us as both a strategic supplier of services to its customer base, as well as in our business model and potential to expand,” said David Lyou, President and CEO of SOCLE.

About Chartered

Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. (Nasdaq:CHRT)(SGX:CHARTERED), one of the world’s top dedicated semiconductor foundries, offers leading-edge technologies down to 65 nanometer (nm), enabling today’s system-on-chip designs. The company further serves its customers’ needs through a collaborative, joint development approach on a technology roadmap that extends to 22nm. Chartered’s strategy is based on open and comprehensive design enablement solutions, manufacturing enhancement strategies, and a commitment to flexible sourcing. In Singapore, the company operates a 300mm fabrication facility and five 200mm facilities. Information about Chartered can be found at www.charteredsemi.com.

About SOCLE

SOCLE Technology is dedicated itself into providing professional SoC design platform solutions and SoC design services. SOCLE’s main R&D team is made up of employees from major hi-tech companies around the globe and possesses broad experience in SoC design. SOCLE Technology owns solid design teams and core technologies (SoC-ImP® and ìPlatform®), and its service scope not only covers major system providers and IC design companies in Taiwan, but also expands to those in USA, Japan, Korea and China. SOCLE Technology offers world-leading design platform solutions and services for ASIC Implementation Service and ARM SoC Platform Service. SOCLE Technology’s mature design platform solutions and professional design services will substantially increase customer’s silicon success and competitiveness of ARM based SoC. SOCLE Technology can be found on the web at www.socle-tech.com.