News & Events
Intersil Ignition IGBT Shipments Drive Past 50 Million Mark

— Devices spark gasoline engines worldwide

IRVINE, Calif., December 6, 2000 — Intersil (NASDAQ:ISIL), a leading provider of discrete power solutions, today announced the shipment of its 50-millionth ignition insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) for use in current and next-generation high-efficiency automobiles. Ignition IGBTs drive the primary side of the ignition coils in gasoline-fueled engines.

"Intersil first began shipping ignition IGBTs in 1992," said Peter Blumenroether, senior marketing manager for automotive discretes at Intersil. "Since that time, we have experienced dramatic yearly growth, shipping over 16 million devices in 2000, and we estimate that shipments will double during 2001. The market’s response to our innovations is a positive affirmation of our efforts, and while we are very proud of achieving this milestone, Intersil’s automotive group has its sites clearly set on the future."

During the last 15 years, the electronic ignition has replaced purely mechanical breaker/distributor-based systems. While the first applications used only one silicon ignition switch to drive a single coil that delivered spark to cylinders, newer systems like "coil on plug" use a coil and an ignition chip for each cylinder. This development has led to increasing numbers of semiconductor ignition switches being used in vehicles. In the first years of the electronic ignition, Bipolar Darlingtons dominated the application. More recently, the IGBT technology has proven to be more cost-effective and now represents the vast majority of electronic switches used for coil on plug applications.

Intersil currently offers a full complement of ignition IGBTs, designed and manufactured in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania. In response to market demand, Intersil is developing a new product family, the EcoSPARK™ series of products. This family will offer ignition IGBT functions in smaller D-Pak packaging that results in significant board space savings for designers. Intersil’s new EcoSPARK is on pace to be released during the first quarter of 2001.

Intersil and the Automotive Market
For over 25 years, Intersil has developed advanced semiconductors to address automotive applications including electronic ignition and engine control, electronic fuel injection, anti-lock braking and airbag systems, general purpose load control and multiplex communications. Intersil offers state-of-the-art automotive power products including standard and logic level gate drive MOSFETs and logic level gate drive IGBTs. The company provides semiconductors to the world's leading automotive suppliers and offers AEC Q101-compliant devices manufactured in QS9000 certified facilities.

About Intersil
Intersil is a leading supplier of semiconductors, reference designs and software for wireless access and communications markets. Intersil applies analog, mixed-signal and radio frequency (RF) expertise to products that enable wireless access to broadband media; provide reliable power management for PCs, files servers and portable information appliances; and convert analog and digital signals in cellular and Internet infrastructure. For more information about Intersil, visit the company's Internet homepage at www.intersil.com.

EcoSPARK is a trademark of Intersil Corporation.

This press release contains statements relating to certain projections and business trends concerning the automotive ignition IGBT market that are forward looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are based upon management’s current expectations, estimates, beliefs, assumptions, and projections about our business and industry. Words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "may," "will" and variations of these words or similar expressions are intended to identify forward looking statements. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, our actual results could differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements as a result of various risk factors. Important risk factors that may cause such material differences for Intersil Holding Corporation ("Intersil") in connection with the automotive IGBT market include, but are not limited to, the automotive market in general, the rate at which our present and future customers and end-users adopt Intersil’s ignition IGBT’s; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders; the loss of a key customer; the qualification, availability and pricing of competing products and technologies and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products; silicon wafer pricing and the availability of foundry and assembly capacity and raw materials; intellectual property disputes; as well as other risk factors detailed from time to time in Intersil’s filings with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission ("SEC") which you may obtain for free at the SEC’s website www.sec.gov. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this press release and Intersil undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements.

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