January 2007 - Japanese EDA Vendor TOOL Corporation Signs Distribution Agreement with TeraSoft in Taiwan

Tokyo, Japan, and Taipei, Taiwan, January 5, 2007- TOOL Corporation, a specialized EDA vendor providing professional versatile layout platform for many semiconductor companies, and TeraSoft, a dedicated EDA software distributor, announced today that TeraSoft became a new distributor in Taiwan for TOOL's versatile layout platform, LAVIS and fracturing system, MaskStudio. In the future, TOOL and TeraSoft will fully develop and support LAVIS & MaskStudio business in Taiwan semiconductor industry.

 "For TOOL Corporation, Taiwan is an important and fast-growing market. We were continuing to find a distributor that has many experiences on EDA products and understands how to develop LSI layout viewer market as well," said Hideaki Hontao, president of TOOL Corporation. "TeraSoft has already been a famous distributor in Taiwan and we also understand that they have professional impression, strong sales and engineering team. Besides their excellent specialized techniques, TeraSoft also earned the trust and respect from Taiwan customers. We are very impressed on the way that TeraSoft develops and supports customers, and expect to work with them to serve our Taiwan customers."

 "LAVIS, which is a specialized LSI layout viewer developed by TOOL Corporation, not only can support many layout and mask database formats but also can review the designs in a very fast speed to reduce the time consumed to open the database," said Kinney Shen, CEO of TeraSoft Inc. "With wafer areas continuing to shrink, semiconductor companies need a high performance specialized LSI layout viewer to verify large scale IC layout in order to improve the yield of wafer manufacture and enhance the correctness of circuit design in efficient and acceptable time. We believe that we can meet the urgent demand of Taiwan semiconductor companies for specialized LSI layout viewer on the strength of the maturity of LAVIS product itself. TeraSoft extremely looks forward to the new cooperation relationship with TOOL Corporation."

 "Many semiconductor companies worldwide use LAVIS and MaskStudio. As for MaskStudio, our existing customers have already gotten a lot of benefit from its high-performance and superior quality. We can provide a variety of solutions for deep submicron process nodes. We expect to provide our DFM (Design for Manufacturing) solution to Taiwan semiconductor companies and help them in the resolution of deep submicron process nodes with our LAVIS and MaskStudio," said Yoshiharu Ito, General Manager of Overseas Sales Department at TOOL Corporation.

About LAVIS

LAVIS is a versatile layout visualization platform supporting fast large data display and multiple file formats. Its fast displaying and memory saving technology dramatically reduce large data load and display time. In addition, various design data including GDSII as well as E-beam formats are supported, and easy integration into other tools allow LAVIS to be used as a "standard layout platform" in a wide range of flow including design, verification, mask data preparation, inspection and failure analysis.

About MaskStudio

MaskStudio is a fracturing system handling huge data and supporting multi formats that allows layout design data to be converted into various mask writing formats. MaskStudio achieves high throughput by its parallel distributed processing technology and job management feature, which becomes a robust solution for large and complex OPCed data conversion. Moreover, incorporating leading-edge mask technology and sliver control function, MaskStudio generates pattern data optimized for each mask writing machine and thus reduces the running cost and turnaround time.

About Terasoft

Founded in 1998, TeraSoft, Inc. is a dedicated professional engineering software company based in Taipei, Taiwan. Since its founding, TeraSoft has been dedicated to providing its customers the most customized and considerate service. To achieve its goal, TeraSoft not only engages in the research and development but invites the most admirable advisers for advanced technologies. TeraSoft therefore is a value-added team with profession, accessibility, and flexibility, not merely a sales channel.

TeraSoft's vision is to be the most reputable, service-oriented and brisk in the Asian-Pacific, and thus earn the reward of being also the most value-added and profitable.

About TOOL

TOOL is a Japanese software development company focused on the EDA sector. TOOL has a proven track record, especially in back-end design phases, of software development symbolized by its LAVIS. TOOL's long and successful experience in both commercial and custom software development guarantees to optimize customers' design environment. For more information about TOOL and its products, visit the website at http://www.tool-corp.com.

Contact:

Terasoft , Inc.

Contact: Marketing
Tel:(02)2788-9300 
Fax:(02)2788-9308 
E-mail: marketing@terasoft.com.tw 
            http://www.terasoft.com.tw

TOOL Corporation

Contact: Asako Nakane
Marketing Group 
Tel: +(81) 3-5723-8124
E-mail: asako@tool.co.jp