Spirea and UMC to Deliver ICs for Multimode WLAN Radios
UMC's RF CMOS enables Spirea's TripleTraC^TM & gTraC^TM chip solutions

Hsinchu, Taiwan and Stockholm, Sweden – June30, 2003- Spirea AB, pioneering leader of RF CMOS semiconductor solutions for multi-mode wireless local area network (WLAN) applications, and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced that UMC has delivered Spirea's TripleTraC and gTraC WLAN radios on the foundry's 0.18um RF CMOS process.

Spirea and UMC are preparing to ramp production on a new family of IEEE 802.11 radios for the WLAN market for introduction this summer. Spirea's SPW300 IEEE 802.11a/b/g TripleTraC and SPW120 IEEE802.11b/g gTraC are designed to provide the most cost effective RF CMOS solutions for multi-standard WLAN chip-sets. Utilization of UMC's advanced RF CMOS process and Spirea's RF modeling facilitated the integration of all the RF components, including low noise amplifiers (LNA's), mixers, voltage controlled oscillators (VCO's), phase lock loops (PLL's), pre amplifiers, and a baseband interface into the radios. The design also eliminates the need for external surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters, resulting in a low cost bill of materials (BOM).

“We are happy to partner with Spirea for the successful delivery of their WLAN chip solutions based on UMC's RF CMOS process,” said Jackson Hu, President of the New Business Development Group at UMC. “The winning combination of Spirea's experienced design team and UMC's advanced RF CMOS technology has facilitated the early introduction of their WLAN IC, and we look forward to continuing our efforts with them for their future product success.”

"UMC is an excellent partner for Spirea and has played an important role in realizing our WLAN radio devices,” said Erik Johnson, Vice President Operations for Spirea. "A long-term collaboration between Spirea and UMC to develop core RF model competency resulted in a confident design tape out and subsequent early delivery of production wafers. We look forward to ramping volume production of our TripleTraC and gTraC in the UMC 0.18 RF CMOS process.”

“We have worked very close with UMC to implement our RF CMOS design methods in UMC's process,” said Johnny Johansson President and CEO of Spirea AB. “The methodology that we deployed together with UMC's advanced 0.18um RF CMOS process secures silicon success with a reliable, cost efficient high volume product.”

Spirea is currently characterizing and testing the TripleTraC & gTraC radios, and has developed a Spirea Transceiver Evaluation Platform (STEP) to facilitate interface to customer baseband/MAC chips.

TripleTraC^TM and gTraC^TM are trademarks of Spirea AB.

About Spirea AB
Spirea is a fabless semiconductor company that has developed RF CMOS Multi-mode System on Chip (SoC) radio transceiver solutions for worldwide Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standards at 2.4 and 5GHz. With corporate headquarters in Sweden, and offices in Finland, New Jersey and California, Spirea exploits leading-edge radio, analog and digital IC process technologies and RF modeling, to deliver highly integrated, low cost, low power, CMOS compliant 802.11a/b/g and 802.11b/g radio transceivers for the WLAN markets. Spirea is a privately held company based in Kista, Sweden, a center of wireless development. More information is available at www.spirea.com.

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 0.13um copper, embedded DRAM, and mixed signal/RFCMOS. UMC is also a leader in 300mm manufacturing; Fab 12A in Taiwan is currently in volume production for a variety of customer products, while the Singapore-based UMCi joint venture with Infineon Technologies will begin pilot production later this year. UMC employs over 8,500 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.

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