Prototyping service now also available via Japanese MPW program partner Toppan

Unterpremstaetten, Austria (December 29, 2011) – austriamicrosystems’ (SIX: AMS) Full Service Foundry business unit released its further expanded fast and cost-efficient IC prototyping service, known as Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) or shuttle run, with an even more extensive schedule in 2012. The prototyping service which combines several designs from different customers onto a single wafer offers significant cost advantages for foundry customers as the costs for wafer and masks are shared among a number of different shuttle participants.

austriamicrosystems’ best in class MPW service includes the whole range of 0.18µm and 0.35µm specialty processes. Overall austriamicrosystems offers almost 150 MPW start dates in 2012, enabled by long lasting co-operations with worldwide MPW partners. Japanese customers may now participate via our new MPW program partner Toppan Technical Design Center Co., Ltd (TDC). Located in Tokyo, TDC (please visit http://www.toptdc.com /en/index.html for further information) is acting as a local foundry service provider for austriamicrosystems and will provide Japanese foundry customers with direct access to MPW service. The complete schedule for 2012 has now been released and detailed start dates per process are available on the web at http://asic.ams.com/MPW.

To take advantage of the MPW service, austriamicrosystems’ foundry customers deliver their completed GDSII-data at specific dates and receive untested packaged samples or dies within a short lead-time of typically 8 weeks for CMOS and 10 weeks for 0.35µm High-Voltage CMOS, SiGe-BiCMOS and Embedded Flash processes. All 0.35µm MPW runs will be produced at austriamicrosystems’ state-of-the-art 8 inch wafer fab in Austria.

About Toppan Technical Design Center Co.:

Ltd. Toppan Technical Design Center Co., Ltd. (TDC) a group company of Toppan Printing Co., LTD, is a total service provider for the development of LSIs utilizing various LSI technology including digital, mixed-signal, analog, memory, etc. The company's SOC design business began over 40 years ago, as part of Toppan Printing's photomask production business. Its expertise grew over time, and now its technical capability includes large scale system LSI design utilizing world-class IP and wide variety of ICs across broad range of analog technology. In recent years, the demand for such full service operation - LSI design through to volume production - has grown dramatically, and this Device OEM Business is now on course to become one of TDC’s main business lines. For more information, please visit http://www.toptdc.com