February 10, 2004

The Evolving Foundry Landscape
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Mark Templeton, CEO of Artisan Components

Selecting the right foundry partner is a central strategic decision for any fabless chip company -- and particularly for a young private company with less room for error. Considerations include foundry process capabilities, price, availability, quality and reliability. New entrants such as Silterra and SMIC have altered the foundry landscape in recent years, and projected new foundry capacity in China may bring dramatic new changes.

Since many of us in the venture industry are familiar with only a limited number of fabs, we have invited Mark Templeton of Artisan to talk about the foundry landscape, including process capabilities, size and other attributes of the various foundries. We will allow discussion time for participants to share their own views and insights into the foundry market.

Mark Templeton is particularly qualified to speak on this topic. As co-founder and CEO of Artisan Components, he has led Artisan's highly-effective efforts to license IC design technology to the foundry community. Artisan now has over 20 foundry partners, including many of the world's leaders. Artisan's IP design platforms, which are licensed to fabless chip companies, IC designers with a common interface to a range of process technologies at Artisan's foundry partners, including complete libraries that have been optimized for each foundry's semiconductor processes.

Founded in 1991, Artisan Components, Inc., (Nasdaq: ARTI), is a leading physical intellectual property (IP) provider. The company's IP design platforms are used by design teams at over 1,200 companies worldwide. The platforms encompass Artisan's Process-Perfect™ memory generators, standard cell libraries, general-purpose and specialty I/Os, analog timing functions and system interface PHY products. Artisan's product portfolio includes a comprehensive set of views and models supporting leading design tools and methodologies. The company's worldwide network of EDA, IP and design service partners extends the Artisan standard to a complete set of design and integration solutions at the system level.

Co-Chairs:
Michael Danaher, Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Yatin Mundkur, Partner, Telesoft Partners