Cadence and UMC Sign Agreement to Streamline Wireless Design in the Fabless Market; Companies to Develop Comprehensive Wireless Solution Using the Cadence Virtuoso Platform and UMC's RFCMOS Manufacturing Expertise
SAN JOSE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Oct. 6, 2005—
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN) (Nasdaq:CDN) and
UMC (NYSE:UMC) (TSE:2303), a world-leading semiconductor foundry,
today announced a collaborative agreement to develop a comprehensive
reference solution for complex wireless designs. The jointly-developed
reference solution, which will be based on the Cadence(R) Virtuoso(R)
custom design platform and targets UMC's RFCMOS processes, will also
include a reference design and other key technology from UMC.
Growing demand for analog / mixed-signal and RF devices for
wireless applications, such as WLAN 802.11, UWB, and Bluetooth, is
driving the need to integrate these various components into a single
SoC and accelerate the path to wireless design. This new collaboration
addresses these challenges by combining UMC's RFCMOS process
technologies to deliver RF capabilities and Cadence's analog /
mixed-signal and RF design tools and flow integration. The
collaboration's first key milestone -- the verification of the
reference design -- has been completed using the Virtuoso platform.
"Aggressive consumer demand for wireless products makes it
critical for our customers to achieve silicon success quickly and meet
market demand," said Patrick T. Lin, chief SoC architect, system and
architecture support at UMC. "By leveraging Cadence's Virtuoso
platform with UMC's advanced manufacturing capabilities, we can
provide a streamlined methodology for the design, simulation and
integration of different components into complex SoCs used in wireless
devices."
The reference design consists of Digital Baseband Physical Layer
Blocks, Mixed-Mode 1GHz AD/DA converter blocks, RF components, along
with several pieces of enabling intellectual property (IP) from UMC.
The companies plan to complete development of the reference flow over
the next several months and then harden the reference design into
silicon. Customers will ultimately be able to access a complete
wireless reference design package from UMC. The package will include
the reference design, the design flow, compatible process design kit
(PDK) and silicon-validation results from the reference design.
"The cost, performance and power requirements of today's advanced
wireless devices are driving greater functional integration, leading
to sophisticated and integrated SoC solutions," said Jan Willis,
senior vice president of Industry Alliances at Cadence. "Our
collaboration with UMC addresses these challenges by providing
customers with a comprehensive technology solution to help shorten
their product development time for wireless designs."
About UMC
UMC (NYSE:UMC)(TSE:2303) is a leading global semiconductor foundry
that manufactures advanced process ICs for applications spanning every
major sector of the semiconductor industry. UMC delivers cutting-edge
foundry technologies that enable sophisticated system-on-chip (SoC)
designs, including 90nm copper, 0.13um copper, and mixed
signal/RFCMOS. UMC is also a leader in 300mm manufacturing; Fab 12A in
Taiwan and Singapore-based Fab 12i are both in volume production for a
variety of customer products. UMC employs approximately 10,500 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.
About Cadence
Cadence enables global electronic-design innovation and plays an
essential role in the creation of today's integrated circuits and
electronics. Customers use Cadence software and hardware,
methodologies, and services to design and verify advanced
semiconductors, printed circuit boards and systems used in consumer
electronics, networking and telecommunications equipment, and computer
systems. Cadence reported 2004 revenues of approximately $1.2 billion,
and has approximately 5,000 employees. The company is headquartered in
San Jose, Calif., with sales offices, design centers, and research
facilities around the world to serve the global electronics industry.
More information about the company, its products, and services is
available at www.cadence.com.
Cadence, the Cadence logo and Virtuoso are registered trademarks
of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property
of their respective owners.
Contact:
Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Bruce Chan, 408-894-2961
Email Contact
or
KJ Communications for UMC (in the US)
Eileen Elam, 650-917-1488
Email Contact
or
UMC (in Taiwan)
Alex Hinnawi, (886) 2-2700-6999 ext. 6958
Email Contact
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