DongbuAnam Selects Prolific for Design for Manufacture Semiconductor Intellectual Property

Agreement includes tools, IP and services over multiple process technologies

NEWARK, Calif. –– August 4, 2004 – Prolific Inc., the leading provider of automated standard cell creation software, today announced a new partnership with DongbuAnam Semiconductor, a leading pure-play wafer foundry. The agreement includes Prolific's ProGenesis software, standard cell IP, and implementation services for DongbuAnam’s advanced digital and mixed-signal technologies.

“With nearly a decade of experience, Prolific is a valuable partner for the creation of semiconductor intellectual property,” said Dr. HJ Park, senior executive vice president of technical support engineering, DongbuAnam Semiconductor. “Prolific-generated standard cells are much more effective than the publicly available offerings or standard cells hand-drawn in-house. We also appreciate Prolific’s ability to focus on manufacturability for increased value for our customers.”

“As the industry moves to process technologies of .13 micron and below, semiconductor design flows require tools and IP that carefully consider manufacturability with design,” noted Dan Nenni, vice president of marketing at Prolific. “DongbuAnam has recognized that DFM SIP is key to their continued success and Prolific is honored to be part of that process.”

Lost yield regularly costs companies millions of dollars per year per production line. Standard cells are critical in achieving a manufacturable design, as they blend logic information (netlists), trade offs of performance, power, area, and yield (cell architecture), and manufacturing process requirements (design rules). Standard cells are used repeatedly, and contribute significantly to an IC’s manufacturability. These factors make standard cells the logical focus of an emphasis on DFM.

Prolific DFM SIP has addressed more than twenty manufacturing enhancement practices. These include decreasing the likelihood of contact/via failures by increasing contact/via metal overlap, using wider and longer metal end-of-line extensions, and using redundant vias/contacts. The number of critical features can be reduced by limiting poly and diffusion routing, using straight transistors, minimizing the number of vertices, and avoiding forbidden pitches.

About DongbuAnam Semiconductor

DongbuAnam Semiconductor, the world's fourth largest pure-play wafer foundry, specializes in world-class CMOS wafer processing that enables system-on-a-chip implementations that integrate the most advanced logic, analog, and mixed-signal technologies. Through close working relationships with strategic partners, DongbuAnam offers a broad range of services that augment its world-class wafer manufacturing capabilities. These include advanced design support, access to a wide variety of intellectual property, and prototyping, as well as backend assembly, packaging and testing. DongbuAnam is a key global supplier within Korea's well-established semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure. For more information, visit www.dsemi.com.

About Prolific

Based in Silicon Valley, Prolific Inc. provides software to enable the design of today's most demanding integrated circuits optimizing quality of results with respect to timing, power, area and yield, and at the same time reducing overall design time and costs. ProTimingTM is the first commercially available optimization tool integrated into the STA step of the physical design flow. ProTiming gives IC designers up to 20 percent improvement in timing and power in a no-risk, fully automated and integrated flow. ProGenesis® is the leading software for automatically creating standard cells optimized for design performance, power, area and yield. Founded in 1995, Prolific counts the top semiconductor companies around the world as customers with products silicon-proven in .18m through 90nm process nodes. Prolific is headquartered in Newark, Calif., at 39899 Balentine Dr., Suite 380, Newark, CA 94560, telephone (510) 252-0490, fax (510) 252-0491. For more information, visit www.prolificinc.com.

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ProGenesis is a registered trademark and ProTiming is a trademark of Prolific, Inc. Prolific acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services.