Cypress Semiconductor to Acquire Cascade Semiconductor Corporation; Deal to Expand Cypress's Wireless Product Portfolio

SAN JOSE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Oct. 20, 2003— Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE: CY) and Cascade Semiconductor Corporation, a privately held company, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement for Cypress to acquire Cascade in a merger. Cascade, a company specializing in 1T Pseudo-SRAM products for wireless applications, has averaged quarterly revenues of approximately $3 million.

"Cascade complements Cypress in multiple ways," said Tony Alvarez, Cypress's executive vice president for the Memory Products Division. "First, it has volume shipments of 1T-Pseudo SRAM products at several accounts that are new to Cypress. It also adds to our product development capabilities in memories for the mobile phone segment. Finally, Cascade brings to Cypress experience in selling into the 'System-in-package' markets within the mobile handset industry."

"Cypress has developed very strong worldwide alliances with virtually every important channel in the wireless market," said Dr. Wenliang Chen, Cascade's co-founder and president. "In addition, it has a large, world-class sales, marketing and applications organization to facilitate market penetration of our extremely competitive products. The combined product portfolios of our companies will provide a line of mobile applications memories I believe is literally second to none."

The closing of the merger, which is expected in the 2003 fourth quarter, is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions to closing. The transaction is expected to be accretive to Cypress's pro forma earnings starting in the first quarter of 2004.

About Cypress

Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE: CY) is Connecting from Last Mile to First Mile(TM) with high-performance solutions for personal, network access, enterprise, metro switch, and core communications-system applications. Cypress Connects(TM) using wireless, wireline, digital, and optical transmission standards, including USB, Fibre Channel, SONET/SDH, Gigabit Ethernet, and DWDM. Leveraging its process and system-level expertise, Cypress makes industry-leading physical layer devices, framers, and network search engines, along with a broad portfolio of high-bandwidth memories, timing technology solutions, and reconfigurable mixed-signal arrays. More information about Cypress is accessible online at www.cypress.com.

About Cascade

Founded in May 2001, Cascade Semiconductor Corporation is a privately held fabless semiconductor company that designs and markets low-power memory products to wireless communications market based in Beaverton, Ore. More information about Cascade is available online at www.cascadesemi.com.

Safe Harbor Provision

The above news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements relate to the expected impact of the acquisition on Cypress's operating results, future market demand and acceptance of Cypress's and Cascade's products, and the development of new business and products of the combined company. Cypress's actual results may vary materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements.

Factors that may cause such a difference include those risks surrounding the closing of the acquisition, timely development, production, and the continued and increased market acceptance of the combined companies' products, Cypress's ability to successfully combine the operation of the two companies, the ability of the combined company to compete in the highly competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, and the other risks detailed from time to time in Cypress's periodic reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cypress and the Cypress logo are registered trademarks of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation. "Connecting from Last Mile to First Mile" and "Cypress Connects" are trademarks of Cypress. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Contact:

Cypress Semiconductor Corporation
Manny Hernandez, 408-943-2754 
(CFO, VP Finance & Administration)
Joseph L. McCarthy, 408-943-2902 
(VP Corporate Communications)