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SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 4, 2001--Virtual Silicon Technology, Inc. today announced the adoption of Silicon Metrics' SiliconSmart CR library characterization and modeling solution to support the nanometer technology requirements of its rapidly expanding embedded component business.

The multi-million dollar, five-year agreement commits the two companies to producing the highest quality logic libraries in the industry. The agreement marks the first SiliconSmart CR adoption by a leading third party library supplier and represents a major expansion of Virtual Silicon's infrastructure for generating high accuracy models for below 0.18-micron semiconductor manufacturing processes.

``Our customers depend upon timely delivery of high quality embedded components in order to achieve their systems-on-chip design goals,'' stated Ed Wan, vice president of worldwide customer support at UMC. ``The Virtual Silicon and Silicon Metrics collaboration results in library models correlated to silicon that are expected to reduce design iterations caused by hidden timing and power modeling inaccuracies.''

``The addition of the Silicon Metrics' solution to our library design factory greatly increases our capacity to deliver highly accurate libraries for our customer's very deep sub-micron designs,'' stated Taylor Scanlon, president and CEO of Virtual Silicon. ``Virtual Silicon's libraries contain hundreds of standard cells, I/O cells, and specialty interfaces ranging from 0.25-micron down to 0.13-micron technologies. Achieving accurate characterization with feature sizes this small over a wide range of operating conditions represents one of the most computationally intensive problems in the industry today. We also value Silicon Metrics' leadership in high accuracy power modeling - an essential requirement in sub-0.18u technologies. SiliconSmart CR delivers superior timing and power accuracy with the throughput demanded by Virtual Silicon's customers.''

``Independent library providers succeed or fail based on their ability to accurately characterize, model, and verify libraries given today's tight product life cycles,'' said Callan Carpenter, president and CEO of Silicon Metrics. ``We are proud to have earned Virtual Silicon's trust and whole-hearted endorsement of our technology. Our close collaboration with Virtual Silicon's process-savvy engineers has greatly benefited our product development effort and we look forward to leveraging this relationship through ongoing feedback and guidance from one of the best embedded technology teams in the industry.''

About Silicon Metrics Corporation

Silicon Metrics Corporation is a privately held company based in Austin, Texas. The company has offices in Austin and San Jose, California and a research and testing facility in Research Park at Mississippi State University. Marubeni Solutions in Japan represents Silicon Metrics Corporation. Company investors include Austin Ventures, Needham Capital Partners, Current Ventures, Cadence Design Systems (NYSE:CDN) and Synopsys, Inc (NASD: SNPS - ). The Silicon Metrics team brings decades of combined electrical engineering and electronic design automation (EDA) experience to bear on the challenge of eliminating silicon re-spins caused by timing flaws. For more information, call (888) 828-3736, or visit Silicon Metrics online at http://www.siliconmetrics.com.

About Virtual Silicon Technology

Virtual Silicon Technology is a leading supplier of semiconductor intellectual property to manufacturers and designers of complex systems-on-chip (SoC). Headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, the company provides process-specific embedded components including standard cell libraries, I/Os, SRAM & ROM compilers, mixed-signal functions, PLL compilers and embedded Flash/EEPROM solutions. Customers include leading fabless semiconductor companies, integrated semiconductor manufacturers, foundries, and SoC developers who demand leading edge technology, the highest quality, maximum performance, lowest power and optimum densities for their semiconductor innovations. For more information, call Ken Brock at (408) 548-2756 or visit Virtual Silicon online at www.virtual-silicon.com

     Virtual Silicon Technology
     Ken Brock, 408/548-2756
     kenb@virtual-silicon.com
        or
     VitalCom PR
     Karen Tyrrell, 650/637-8212 ext. 204
     karen@vitalcompr.com