CARSEM HITS MILESTONE OF SHIPPING ONE BILLION MLP'S (QFN)

Scotts Valley, CA- October 19, 2004-Carsem, a leading provider of turnkey packaging and test services to the semiconductor industry, announced today that they hit a major milestone by recently shipping their one billionth MLP (Micro Leadframe Package).

The MLP is a family of packages that consist of the MLPQ (Quad), which is a QFN (Quad Flat No-lead) type package that is compliant to JEDEC's MO220, and the MLPD (Dual) which are SON (Small Outline No-lead) type packages that are MO229 compliant.

In early September this year, Carsem announced that they are in the process of increasing their total MLP capacity to 155 million units per month, 20 million of which will be in the new Carsem-Suzhou factory, which is located 50 miles (80 km) west of Shanghai. The total capacity is a combination of both saw and mechanical singulation technologies.

According to Paul Smith, Carsem's Director of Marketing, "The MLP has seen amazing growth in our industry over the past few years and it appears it will continue to be a very popular choice for many of the new generation devices, especially for wireless applications." Smith further stated, "In a recent conversation with Jim Walker, who is the Vice President of Research at Gartner Dataquest, Jim estimated the total number of QFN's that will be assembled by contract assemblers in 2004 will be about 3.1 billion units and will reach an estimated 10 billion units by 2008 so we expect to see significant continued growth in this package family."

David Comley, Group Managing Director, stated, "Since we first introduced the MLP we have managed to successfully expand our MLP package capacity to keep pace with our customer's needs. We will continue to make investments in this package technology and improved productivity efforts. In fact, we will begin shipping production volumes using our new High-Density approach by the end of this year."

About Carsem
Carsem is a leading provider of turnkey packaging and test services to the semiconductor industry, and offers one of the widest ranges of package & test portfolios in the world. To meet the growing demands of the telecommunications and wireless markets for smaller, faster, thermally-efficient devices, Carsem's portfolio includes several advanced technologies, such as the Micro Leadframe Package (MLP), Small Scale Ball Grid Array (SSBGA), Flip Chip On Leadframe (FCOL), and a SiP (System-in-Package) capability. Carsem also offers a full range of turnkey test services for RF, mixed-signal, linear, digital and power devices. Our factories maintain world-class quality standards having achieved SAC Level 1, ISO-9001, ISO-14001, QS-9000, TS16949 certifications, and are supported with a global network of sales and engineering support offices. Carsem is a member of the Hong Leong Group with factories located in Ipoh, Malaysia, Suzhou, China and sales offices across the USA, plus the UK. Carsem, Inc. sales headquarters is located at 269 Mt. Hermon Road, Suite 104, Scotts Valley, CA 95066, phone (831) 438-6861, fax (831) 438-6863, web site: www.carsem.com.