UMC Names Dr. Jackson Hu Head of Design Support

Dr. Hu also serves as President of the New Business Development Group

Hsinchu, Taiwan, March 25, 2003-UMC (NYSE: UMC) today named Dr. Jackson Hu as head of UMC's Design Support Division in charge of supporting the front-end design requirements of UMC's global foundry customers. These activities include library support, design kit and IP management, design rule check (DRC) and UMC's Silicon ShuttleTM prototyping program. Dr. Hu brings with him considerable semiconductor industry experience and has pioneered the rapid growth of numerous IC companies with his leadership. In addition, Dr. Hu was named president of the company's New Business Development Group that will focus on assessing the foundry requirements of emerging IC design companies.

"Dr. Jackson Hu is a welcome addition to our company," said John Hsuan, CEO of UMC. "Dr. Hu possesses extensive knowledge in semiconductor design and has a proven track record in leading fabless companies to success. We are looking forward to his valuable contributions as head of UMC's Design Support functions, and in promoting our foundry activities to the IC design community."

"It is my pleasure to join the team at UMC and lead the company's design support efforts," said Jackson. "With a well developed support infrastructure already in place, we are well poised to offer the most comprehensive and innovative design support and IP solutions to UMC's foundry partners designing into our process technologies."

Hu, A 25-year veteran of the high-tech industry, was previously president and CEO of SiRF Technology, a fabless communications IC and IP (intellectual property) company focusing on location technology based on GPS. Under his leadership, SiRF became a market leader in enabling GPS for high-volume commercial and consumer applications such as elderly and child locator devices, in-vehicle navigation, car theft prevention and traffic management. Dr. Hu served in a number of executive industry positions, including senior vice president and general manager of S3. While at S3, he was responsible for the development of industry leading GUI (graphical user interface) accelerator products. He also built an analog team, a COT (customer owned tooling) team, and an audio and communication business unit. He helped grow the company into an industry leader with 35 percent market share.

Hu 's other significant accomplishments include co-founding IC Ensemble, a fabless IC company that focuses on audio controller products, which was acquired by Via Technology in 2000. He also co-funded Verticom, a company that developed PC graphics cards. Western Digital later acquired Verticom in 1988.

Dr. Hu earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University and his master's and doctorate degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois, Urbana. He later earned an MBA from Santa Clara University.

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