Cadence First Encounter Selected by Faraday for the Design of Advanced System-on-Chips

HSINCHU, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 31, 2002--Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN), the world's leading supplier of electronic design products and services, today announced that Faraday Technology Corporation (TAIEX:3035), a leading integrated circuit (IC) service company, has selected Cadence(R) First Encounter(R) Ultra for physical prototyping of its system on-a-chip (SoC) designs. Faraday is a long time user of the Cadence Design Planner physical floorplanning tool. The company will use First Encounter, a key nanometer technology included in the Encounter system, to ensure design success and shorter time-to-market for its end customers.

Faraday design engineers will employ a "continuous convergence" design methodology, using First Encounter Ultra to quickly generate and rapidly refine an accurate virtual prototype of the physical design. This provides fast feedback on chip performance and a fully functional, physically feasible layout down to the wire level. This includes die size, power, timing, module partitioning and placement, routing, and signal integrity detail. First Encounter Ultra bridges the gap between logic design and physical implementation. It will help Faraday's design teams produce a signoff-quality floor plan and placement optimized for rapid, reliable design closure. First Encounter will be used to drive both Cadence and third-party tools for detailed chip implementation.

"Faraday is challenged with reaching timing and signal integrity closure on fast SoC designs quickly in order to capture aggressive market windows," said Matthew Chan, corporate senior vice president and president of Cadence Asia Pacific. "First Encounter Ultra establishes the physical feasibility of complex, demanding SoC designs in nanometer process technologies. This enables users to reach the market quickly. It also interfaces easily with customers' existing Cadence and third party implementation tools."

"As a world leading IC Design Service provider, Faraday uses First Encounter Ultra from Cadence to do feasibility analysis early in the design process," said P.C. Huang, manager of design flow of Faraday Technology Corporation. "First Encounter Ultra provides the data needed to evaluate customers' requests within tight schedule demands. The results from First Encounter are very high quality. We are impressed with the reliability, turnaround time improvement, feasibility analysis, and timing accuracy of First Encounter. It helps us bridge the gap between logic design and physical implementation."

About Faraday Technology Corporation

Faraday Technology Corporation has been providing remarkable ASIC design services and valuable IP for customers ranging from small start-ups to large multinational IC design houses and system houses. With annual revenue of 2.4 billion NT Dollars in 2001 and more than 380 employees, Faraday is the largest organization of its type in the Asia-Pacific area. Headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, Faraday has branch offices around the world, including the U.S.A., Japan, and Europe. More information on Faraday is available at: http://www.faraday.com.tw.

About Cadence

Cadence is the world's largest supplier of electronic design technologies and services. Leading computer, networking, wireless, and consumer electronics companies use the company's solutions to design electronic systems and semiconductors down to nanometer scale. IEEE, the world's largest technical professional society, honored Cadence with its 2002 Corporate Innovation Recognition award. With approximately 5,600 employees and 2001 revenues of approximately $1.4 billion, Cadence has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN. More information about the company and its products and services is available at www.cadence.com.

Note to Editors: Cadence and the Cadence logo are registered trademarks of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
             Peggy Ng, (852) 2377-7170
             peggyng@cadence.com
                 or
             Faraday Technology Corporation
             Selina Ko, 886-3-5787888 # 8048_ 
             selina@faraday.com.tw