UMC's 90nm URAM Used in Mobile TV Applications

-- UMC, a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced that DiBcom, the world leading provider of Mobile TV solutions, has successfully adopted UMC’s URAM embedded memory solution for its 90nm products manufactured at the foundry. UMC’s URAM, a high-density embedded memory solution, enables higher performance, lower power consumption, and smaller chip area for DiBcom’s mobile TV chips, when compared with traditional SRAM memory implementations.

“At DiBcom we maintain our leadership by always looking for new ways to offer the best solutions and more value to our customers,” said David Dorval, vice president of Operations at DiBcom. “UMC’s URAM allows us to reduce power and cost, two important factors for the emerging Mobile TV market.”

S C Chien, vice president of advanced technology development at UMC, said, “UMC is constantly developing innovative technology solutions to enhance the performance capabilities of our customers’ products. The power and performance advantages offered by our URAM memory solution, which has an interface similar to that of SRAM, is poised to help DiBcom increase the competitiveness of their new generation mobile TV products.”

About UMC’s URAM

UMC’s URAM, part of the company’s IP memory family, is intended for a wide range of applications including communications, graphics and imaging systems, and storage devices. The memory bitcell is 1/4 to 1/5 the size of 6T SRAM and its macro area is approximately 1/2 to 1/3 times smaller than SRAM, which in turn allows for more efficient chip area utilization, flexibility and smaller chip size. The URAM cell is completely compatible with UMC’s logic process for seamless integration, with few additional process steps needed. URAM is shrinkable to 45nm and below and features low soft error rate and performance ranges of 200MHz for high speed macro, and 166MHz for low power macro designs.

About UMC

UMC (NYSE:UMC)(TSE:2303) is a leading global semiconductor foundry that manufactures advanced system-on-chip (SoC) designs for applications spanning every major sector of the IC industry. UMC’s SoC Solution Foundry strategy is based on the strength of the company’s advanced technologies, which include production proven 90nm, 65nm, mixed signal/RFCMOS, and a wide range of specialty technologies. Production is supported through 10 wafer manufacturing facilities that include two advanced 300mm fabs; Fab 12A in Taiwan and Singapore-based Fab 12i are both in volume production for a variety of customer products. The company employs approximately 13,000 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.