Cadence and UMC Collaborate on 22ULP/ULL Reference Flow Certification for Advanced Consumer, 5G and Automotive Designs

Collaboration enables mutual customers to easily adopt the integrated Cadence digital full flow, which offers leading implementation and signoff technology for ultra-low power designs

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CDNS) and United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE:UMC; TWSE: 2303) (“UMC”), a global semiconductor foundry, today announced that the Cadence digital full flow has been optimized and certified for the UMC 22ULP/ULL process technologies to accelerate consumer, 5G and automotive application design. The flow, which incorporates leading implementation and signoff technology for ultra-low power designs, enables mutual customers to deliver top-quality designs and achieve a faster path to tapeout. To learn more about the Cadence digital advanced-node solutions, please visit www.cadence.com/go/advnd22.

The Cadence digital full flow that has been optimized for use on UMC’s 22ULP/ULL process technologies includes the Innovus^™ Implementation System, Genus^™ Synthesis Solution, Liberate^™ Characterization, Quantus^™ Extraction Solution, Tempus^™ Timing Signoff Solution, Litho Physical Analyzer and Physical Verification System. Some of the flow’s key capabilities that enable 22ULP/ULL design are as follows:

• Best-in-class design implementation and optimization engines: The engines are fully integrated from RTL to GDSII, enabling users to achieve power, performance and area (PPA) goals and reduce time to market.
• Optimal signoff convergence: Cadence offers the only digital flow with fully integrated place-and-route, timing signoff, physical verification and IR drop/power signoff capabilities, which provide unparalleled last-mile design closure with the fewest iterations to facilitate the timely delivery of advanced-node products.
• Low-power standard cell library development and characterization: UMC replaced its incumbent library characterization tool with Cadence Liberate Characterization, which is the foundation of the broader digital full flow and a critical piece that enables advanced timing and power analysis, optimization and signoff flows.

“Our 22ULP/ULL platform is ideal for a wide variety of semiconductor applications, including power- or leakage-sensitive consumer chips and wearable products that require longer battery life,” said Y.H. Chen, director of the IP Development and Design Support Division at UMC. “By collaborating with Cadence, we’re providing access to our latest process technologies and Cadence’s robust digital full flow, which enables our customers to meet stringent design requirements and achieve design and productivity goals.”

“Through our latest collaboration with UMC, our mutual customers can adopt our certified digital reference flow and UMC’s 22ULP/ULL low-power technologies and begin design work immediately,” said Kam Kittrell, senior product management group director in the Digital & Signoff Group at Cadence. “This certification allows UMC customers to leverage the most advanced low-power tool feature sets for synthesis, place-and-route, and signoff, enabling customers to design innovative applications with confidence.”

The Cadence digital full flow provides customers with a fast path to design closure and better predictability and supports the company’s Intelligent System Design^™ strategy, which enables advanced-node system-on-chip (SoC) design excellence.

About Cadence

Cadence is a pivotal leader in electronic design, building upon more than 30 years of computational software expertise. The company applies its underlying Intelligent System Design strategy to deliver software, hardware and IP that turn design concepts into reality. Cadence customers are the world’s most innovative companies, delivering extraordinary electronic products from chips to boards to systems for the most dynamic market applications, including consumer, hyperscale computing, 5G communications, automotive, mobile, aerospace, industrial and healthcare. For seven years in a row, Fortune magazine has named Cadence one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Learn more at cadence.com.

About UMC

UMC (NYSE: UMC, TWSE: 2303) is a leading global semiconductor foundry company. The company provides high quality IC fabrication services, focusing on logic and various specialty technologies to serve all major sectors of the electronics industry. UMC’s comprehensive IC processing technologies and manufacturing solutions include Logic/Mixed-Signal, embedded High-Voltage, embedded Non-Volatile-Memory, RFSOI and BCD etc. Most of UMC's 12-in & 8-in fabs with its core R&D are located in Taiwan, with additional ones throughout Asia. UMC has total 12 fabs in production with combined capacity close to 800,000 wafers per month (8-in equivalent), and all of them are certified with IATF-16949 automotive quality standard. UMC is headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, plus local offices in United States, Europe, China, Japan, Korea & Singapore, with worldwide total 19,500 employees. For more information, please visit: http://www.umc.com.

Note from UMC Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

Some of the statements in the foregoing announcement are forward-looking within the meaning of the U.S. Federal Securities laws, including statements about introduction of new services and technologies, future outsourcing, competition, wafer capacity, business relationships and market conditions. Investors are cautioned that actual events and results could differ materially from these statements as a result of a variety of factors, including conditions in the overall semiconductor market and economy; acceptance and demand for products from UMC; and technological and development risks. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in UMC’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. UMC does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable law.

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Cadence and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) announced that the Cadence digital full flow has been optimized and certified for the UMC 22ULP/ULL process technologies to accelerate consumer, 5G and automotive application design.