austriamicrosystems' business unit Full Service Foundry announced today that the mark of 10,000 device designs manufactured via its MPW (Multi-Project Wafer) Shuttle service will be crossed in the first quarter of 2005. This makes austriamicrosystems’ MPW Shuttle service, established in 1987 as the first of its kind, the industry’s most used prototyping program. To celebrate the resounding success of this industry-leading initiative, austriamicrosystems will offer one MPW Shuttle participation in the first quarter of 2005 free of charge to the 10,000th device design.

austriamicrosystems’ MPW Shuttle service is a scheduled, cost-effective and fast prototyping service offering customers lower mask tooling costs as well as wafer costs by sharing these expenses with other companies. The MPW Shuttle Service allows fabless design houses to efficiently validate their designs prior to putting them into mass production at austriamicrosystems.

Today, the MPW Shuttle service provides more then 50 start slots per year, either directly at austriamicrosystems or via the leading wafer prototyping organizations in the world. Amongst others, wafer shuttle services are offered for austriamicrosystems’ 0.35µm CMOS, High Voltage CMOS and SiGe-BiCMOS process technologies.

“Along our mission to provide extraordinary service to our customers for our specialty processes, the MPW Shuttle Service is a key element in the successful transfer of innovative products to mass production. In combination with our well-known HIT Kit process design kit, we offer our customers an easily accessible, cost-effective platform to develop the analog specialty products of the future”, comments Thomas Riener, Director Marketing for the business unit Full Service Foundry. “We are particularly proud of the broad acceptance of our MPW Shuttle service demonstrating our winning approach to ramping up new business with our customers.”

About austriamicrosystems
austriamicrosystems’ business unit Full Service Foundry has successfully positioned itself in the mixed-signal foundry market offering well-established RF CMOS, High Voltage CMOS, BiCMOS and SiGe-BiCMOS processes. With superior support during the design phase, with high-end tools and experienced engineers, austriamicrosystems succeeds to be an attractive analog/mixed-signal foundry partner especially for fabless design houses.

austriamicrosystems is a leading designer and manufacturer of high performance analog ICs, combining more than 20 years of analog design capabilities and system know-how with its own state-of-the-art manufacturing and test facilities. austriamicrosystems leverages its expertise in low power and high accuracy to provide industry-leading customized and standard analog products. Operating worldwide with more than 800 employees, austriamicrosystems focuses on the areas of power management, sensors & sensor interfaces, portable audio and car access through its business units Communications, Industry & Medical, Automotive and Full Service Foundry. austriamicrosystems is listed on the SWX Swiss Exchange in Zurich (ticker symbol: AMS).