Press Release
TSMC Joins Open Core Protocol International Partnership
Membership supports OCP-IP’s efforts to create a common standard for IP core interfaces that facilitate "plug and play" SoC design
PORTLAND, ORE. — April 28, 2003 — Open Core Protocol International Partnership (OCP-IP) today announced Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) (NYSE: TSM), the leading pure play foundry, is joining the organization. Membership in OCP-IP allows TSMC’s customers to optimize design resources, shorten design cycles and achieve greater first-run success, resulting in lower design costs and faster time to market.
“As a major foundry supplier, we support this verifiable standard that will greatly improve our customers’ time-to-market and significantly increase first-time success,” said Ed Chen, director of design and e-services marketing for TSMC. “We look forward to a productive relationship with OCP-IP.”
OCP-IP members receive free training and support, free software tools, and free documentation, enabling members to utilize their core competencies and focus on the challenges of SoC design. Leveraging OCP-IP’s infrastructure eliminates the need to design, document, and evolve a proprietary standard and support tools, freeing up critical resources for real design work and providing enormous cost savings.
“We are pleased to count TSMC among our members,” said Ian Mackintosh, president of OCP-IP. “As a leading foundry supplier, TSMC’s membership endorses and promotes the importance of an open, complete, fully-supported socket to all participants in the SoC design community.”
OCP-IP has seen rapid acceptance and adoption throughout the industry, with many EDA suppliers and IP providers developing products and support around both its current and upcoming OCP release.
About TSMC
TSMC is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry's leading process technology and the foundry industry's largest portfolio of process-proven library, IP, design tools and reference flows. The company operates one advanced 300mm wafer fab, six eight-inch fabs and one six-inch wafer fab. TSMC also has substantial capacity commitments at two joint ventures fabs (Vanguard and SSMC) and at its wholly-owned subsidiary, WaferTech. In early 2001, TSMC became the first IC manufacturer to announce a 90-nanometer technology alignment program with its customers. TSMC's corporate headquarters are in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. For more information about TSMC, go to www.tsmc.com.
About OCP-IP
The OCP International Partnership Association, Inc. (OCP-IP) was announced in December 2001 to promote and support the open core protocol (OCP) as the complete socket standard that ensures rapid creation and integration of interoperable virtual components. OCP-IP's Governing Steering Committee participants are: Nokia [NYSE: NOK], Texas Instruments [NYSE: TXN], ST Microelectronics [NYSE: STM], United Microelectronics Corporation [NYSE: UMC], and Sonics, the inventor of OCP. OCP-IP is a non-profit corporation delivering the first fully supported, openly licensed core-centric protocol that comprehensively fulfills system-level integration requirements. The OCP facilitates IP core reusability and reduces design time and risk, along with manufacturing costs for SoC designs.
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