UMC Delivers Leading-edge 65nm FPGAs to Xilinx

World's largest FPGA features 11 metal layers and industry's highest gate count

HSINCHU, Taiwan, November 8, 2006 -UMC (NYSE: UMC; TSE: 2303), a leading global semiconductor foundry, announced that it has delivered the world's largest 65nm FPGAs to Xilinx. This new devices deliver a 65 percent logic capacity increase over previous generation FPGAs to enable the industry's highest gate count, with approximately 1.1 billion transistors. The chips, which feature triple gate oxide technology and 11 copper metal layers, have demonstrated excellent initial yields and are expected to be ready for full production in several months.

Jackson Hu, chairman and CEO of UMC, said, "UMC's 65nm technology has seen widespread acceptance from leading-edge manufacturers of cell phones, FPGA, graphics and broadband applications. Particularly noteworthy, is the number of new customers engaged at this technology node. This demonstrates the confidence that customers have in the competitiveness of our 65nm process. UMC's longstanding partnership with Xilinx continues to strengthen with each technology generation, with this latest product success representing yet another significant milestone for our two companies. We look forward in the coming months to bringing their newest products to full production."

Wim Roelandts, chairman, president and CEO of Xilinx, said, "Xilinx is currently ramping 65nm wafer starts at UMC. We are quite pleased with our progress-in fact, UMC's yields have exceeded our expectations for our most advanced products. We'll continue to leverage UMC's advanced 65nm technology for our upcoming product lines to strengthen our leading position in the FPGA industry."

UMC is the foundry leader in 65nm process technology, which delivered the foundry industry's first 65nm customer products in June of 2005. UMC is currently in volume production for multiple customers using the leading-edge process, and has engaged with nine customers so far, for a variety of market applications. Yield improvement for 65nm has been even faster than for the 90nm process generation. Though performance gains vary across applications, compared with the 90nm generation, 65nm products exhibit an average of 30 percent higher performance, and a 35 percent reduction in dynamic power consumption.

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 volume production 90nm, industry-leading 65nm, and mixed signal/RFCMOS. UMC's 10 wafer manufacturing facilities 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 12,000 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.