Oki Electric Enhances its ASIC Product Offerings Through Collaboration with UMC

Tokyo, Japan and Hsinchu, Taiwan, March 10, 2003 -- Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. (TSE 6703), Japan's leading electronics manufacturing company, and world leading semiconductor foundry UMC (NYSE UMC) announced today that a new ASIC product line will be introduced by Oki. This marks the first result of comprehensive business partnership between the two companies announced on September 4, 2002. The new ASIC product line from Oki, the MG7xK family, uses UMC's 0.15µm process.

"The agreement is essential for Oki in that it enables us to offer 0.15µm SoC (system-on-chip) products to customers more quickly, in response to high-performance design requirements. This is made possible by the continuing joint efforts between the two companies to port Oki's intellectual property (IP) cores to UMC's libraries and process technology," said Katsuhiko Sano, President of the Silicon Solutions Company at Oki Electric. "We believe our new ASIC is a welcome result of the partnership, delivering major benefits to our customers."

John Hsuan, UMC Vice Chairman and CEO, said, "We have achieved many positive results from our productive relationship with Oki, and are pleased our cooperative efforts have led to the introduction of their MG7xK ASIC product family based on UMC's 0.15um process. UMC is committed to building mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with our foundry customers, and we look forward to accomplishing many more new milestones with Oki."

Under the alliance with UMC, Oki Electric will provide its entire portfolio of strategic IP for use in the foundry's Gold IP™ program. Customers can access various Oki IP offerings through UMC's Gold IP program, including the licensed ARM® µProcessor cores and its µPLAT® design platform, as well as standard Gold IP offerings such as high performance ADCs and DACs, SERDES, and high-speed I/Os. The partnership allows Oki customers to reduce the cost and time of their design efforts by giving them proven IP solutions with UMC's qualified silicon cores, which are already in volume production.

By integrating design rules and process parameters with UMC under the partnership, Oki's new ASICs, the MG7xK family (MG74K/75K/76K), benefits Oki's customers, cutting the time to production to less than six months for development and release of a fully tested, production ready 0.15µmless than half the industry norm of 12 - 18 months. This shortened time-to-production is achieved by using UMC's proven 0.15µm manufacturing process which allows Oki to bypass the production ramp-up stage and the learning curve typically needed during the transition to smaller geometries.

The new MG7xK family improves speed per gate for more than 30% and 20% higher integration. It also offers a 25% reduction in power consumption. This system ASIC is ideal for use in network equipment, PC peripherals, and general electronic appliances. For dramatically shorter development times, it supports the µPLAT, Oki's integrated platform solution for system LSI development, which is based on ARM7TDMI™ and ARM946E-S™.

Oki will begin marketing the new MG7xK family in April 2003. As an added benefit of the foundry relationship, Oki plans to migrate to 0.13µm ASIC products within the next year.

Characteristics of Oki's MG7xK Family
- Power supply voltage: 1.5V (core), 3.3V (I/O)
- Total number of metal layers: 4 layers (MG74K), 5 layers (MG75K), 6 layers (MG76K)
- Maximum number of gates: 10M
- Maximum number of I/O pads: 868
- Memory: Synchronous single/dual port SRAM, ROM
- Interface: SSTL-2, 5V tolerant, USB, PCI, PLL
- IP: ARM7TDMI, AMR946E-S, ADC/DAC, USB2.0, JPEG, SSCG
- Package: QFP, TQFP, LQFP, BGA, LFBGA, LGA

About Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
Founded more than a century ago in 1881, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. is Japan's first telecommunications manufacturer, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Oki Electric provides customers with top-quality products, technologies and solutions for telecommunications systems, information systems and electronic devices through its corporate vision, "Oki, Network Solutions for a Global Society." Visit Oki's global web site at http://www.oki.com/.

Notes:
- ADC: Analog-to-Digital Converter
- DAC: Digital-to-Analog Converter
- SERDES: Serializer/Deserializer
- Gold IP is a trademark of United Microelectronics Corp.
- µPLAT is a registered trademark of Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. in Japan, Germany and the UK.
- ARM is a registered trademark of ARM Limited. ARM7TDMI and AMR946E-S are trademarks of ARM Limited.
- All other trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.