Through-Sili­con-Via tech­no­lo­gy fuses memo­ry + GPU to enable cut­ting-edge performance

Hsin­chu, Tai­wan, July 20, 2015 – United Microelec­tro­nics Cor­po­ra­ti­on (NYSE:UMC;TWSE: 2303) (“UMC”), a lea­ding glo­bal semi­con­duc­tor foundry, today announ­ced that it has ente­red volu­me pro­duc­tion for the Through-Sili­con-Via (TSV) tech­no­lo­gy used on the AMD Rade­on™ R9 Fury X, the flag­ship GPU in the recent­ly announ­ced Rade­on™ R 300 Series of gra­phics cards. The AMD Rade­on™ R9 Fury X GPU uti­li­zes UMC’s TSV pro­cess tech­no­lo­gy and die-stack­ing to fuse HBM DRAM with AMD’s GPU on a sili­con inter­po­ser, enab­ling the GPU to deli­ver unmat­ched memo­ry band­width of 4096-bit and qua­dru­ple the per­for­mance-per-watt over the cur­rent GDDR5 indus­try standard.

“AMD has a suc­cessful histo­ry of deli­ve­ring cut­ting-edge GPU pro­ducts to mar­ket,” said S.C. Chien, vice pre­si­dent of Cor­po­ra­te Mar­ke­ting and co-chair of the TSV com­mit­tee at UMC. “This volu­me pro­duc­tion mile­stone is the cul­mi­na­ti­on of UMC’s clo­se TSV col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with AMD, and we are hap­py to bring the per­for­mance bene­fits of this tech­no­lo­gy to help power their new gene­ra­ti­on of GPU pro­ducts. We look for­ward to con­ti­nuing this fruitful part­ner­ship with AMD for years to come.”

Bryan Black, seni­or fel­low at AMD said, “UMC’s long track record of brin­ging inno­va­ti­ve tech­no­lo­gies from the R&D stage to volu­me pro­duc­tion for cus­to­mer pro­ducts was a com­pel­ling reason for us to enga­ge with them as our foundry for the inter­po­ser and asso­cia­ted TSV tech­no­lo­gy. They have again pro­ven their abili­ty to exe­cu­te suc­cessful­ly with TSV on our latest high-per­for­mance GPU, and we are plea­sed to have them as a valuable sup­p­ly-chain part­ner for our exci­ting new line of Rade­on products.”

AMD’s GPU and sta­cked HBM dies are pla­ced on top of UMC’s inter­po­ser that employs a TSV pro­cess. Through a CMOS redis­tri­bu­ti­on lay­er and advan­ced micro-bum­ping, the­se ICs com­mu­ni­ca­te with each other on the inter­po­ser, thus enab­ling the cut­ting-edge per­for­mance and form fac­tor of AMD’s Rade­on™ R9 Fury X. AMD’s sili­con inter­po­ser with TSV is manu­fac­tu­red at UMC’s spe­cial­ty 300mm Fab 12i in Singapore.

About UMC
UMC (NYSE: UMC, TWSE: 2303) is a lea­ding glo­bal semi­con­duc­tor foundry that pro­vi­des advan­ced IC pro­duc­tion for appli­ca­ti­ons span­ning every major sec­tor of the elec­tro­nics indus­try. UMC’s robust foundry solu­ti­ons enable chip desi­gners to levera­ge the company’s sophisti­ca­ted tech­no­lo­gy and manu­fac­tu­ring, which include 28nm gate-last High‑K/Metal Gate tech­no­lo­gy, ultra-low power plat­form pro­ces­ses spe­ci­fi­cal­ly engi­nee­red for Inter­net of Things (IoT) appli­ca­ti­ons and the hig­hest-rated AEC-Q11 Grade‑0 auto­mo­ti­ve indus­try manu­fac­tu­ring capa­bi­li­ties. UMC’s 10 wafer fabs are loca­ted throug­hout Asia and are able to pro­du­ce over 500,000 wafers per month. The com­pa­ny employs over 17,000 peo­p­le world­wi­de, with offices in Tai­wan, main­land Chi­na, Euro­pe, Japan, Korea, Sin­ga­po­re, and the United Sta­tes. UMC can be found on the web at 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 future out­sour­cing, wafer capa­ci­ty, tech­no­lo­gies, 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, inclu­ding its regis­tra­ti­on state­ments and reports on Forms F‑1, F‑3, F‑6 and 20‑F and 6‑K, in each case as amen­ded. 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.