Broadcom Delivers Industry's Highest Performance 64-Bit MIPS-Based, Multi-Processor Solution for Broadband Networking.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 18, 2001

Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq:BRCM)

BCM1250 Samples Currently Shipping to Early Access Partners;

Scales up to 1 Gigahertz (GHz) with Twice the Memory and

I/O Bandwidth of Competitive Solutions

Broadcom Corporation, (Nasdaq:BRCM), the leading provider of integrated circuits enabling broadband communications, today announced that it is now delivering the Broadcom(R) BCM1250, the first product in its SiByte(TM) family of processors, a new generation of high-performance, low-power, highly integrated processor solutions for the Internet infrastructure market.

The BCM1250, with two 64-bit CPUs, a high-speed memory subsystem, and input/output (I/O) peripherals all tightly integrated onto a single 60 million transistor silicon chip, sets the standard for "state-of-the-art" processor technology, Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design and System-on-a-Chip (SOC) integration.

Flexible enough to handle both wirespeed in-line processing as well as exception path processing requirements, the BCM1250 is ideal for a broad variety of applications across the Local Area Network (LAN), Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), and Wide Area Network (WAN), including deep content switching, routing, modem/call termination, hardware acceleration of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), firewalls and other value-add services, storage (SAN/NAS), and wireless infrastructure applications.

"Network processing is evolving from being purely about performance to optimizing overall system performance, power, programmability and cost," said Dan Dobberpuhl, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Broadband Processor Business Unit (formed following the acquisition of SiByte, Inc. in December 2000). "Broadcom is uniquely positioned to help manufacturers develop leading-edge solutions that meet their total performance, power, flexibility and cost objectives with our highly integrated processors that combine multiple low-power, high-performance CPUs based on the standard MIPS architecture with exceptional memory bandwidth and I/O integration."

"The BCM1250 represents a significant breakthrough in terms of multi-processing performance and integration," said John Wakerly, Consulting Professor of Electrical Engineering, at Stanford University. "I have been personally involved with development of the 1250 from the beginning, so I am delighted to see working BCM1250 samples."

Fast-Growing Network Silicon Market

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the market for network processing silicon was $1.6 billion in 1999 and will rise to $3.4 billion by 2003. Increasing data rates (from OC-3 to OC-192) are driving demand for fast, highly integrated processor solutions that can meet the density requirements and power budgets of today's line card designs. At the same time, the need to support new protocols and standards (e.g. VPNs, VoIP, QoS, and iSCSI) in a constantly evolving industry environment is fueling interest in programmable solutions, especially those that leverage a flexible, easy-to-learn software model.

"A new candidate for control plane and wire-speed in-line processing at data rates up to 2.5Gb/sec (OC-48), the 1 GHz dual processor BCM1250 offers the flexibility to support differentiation via software and to help track evolving standards and protocols," said Max Baron, Editor in Chief of the MicroProcessor Report.

Innovative, Robust Multi-Processor Design

The BCM1250 tightly integrates two 64-bit MIPS(R) CPU cores, each scalable to 600 MHz - 1 GHz, large cache memory, and integrated I/O onto a single chip. The heart of the processor is the ZBbus(TM), a 256-bit wide system bus that delivers up to 100 Gbps of on-chip bus bandwidth and maintains complete data and I/O coherence throughout the system. The result is a symmetric, coherent multi-processor (SCMP) platform that offers very high packet processing performance at low power with the large memory and I/O bandwidth required to manipulate and move network data at maximum efficiency and speed. In addition, because the processor is compliant with the standard MIPS64(TM) Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), customers can take advantage of the large existing base of third-party development tools and software written for the MIPS platform (e.g., compilers, debuggers, RTOS, and applications), thereby minimizing their programming efforts.

"The BCM1250 delivers the performance and integration we require in our service line cards for high-touch content processing and fast packet forwarding. Furthermore, since the processor is compliant with MIPS64, we can take advantage of industry standard tools and software written for the MIPS platform, thereby minimizing our overall development effort," said Yakov Zbinovich, Hardware Development Manager at Redback Networks.

L2 Cache, DDR Memory Controller, and Integrated I/O

Along with two high-performance CPUs, the BCM1250 includes an on-chip 512K L2 Cache and a DDR memory controller that supports up to 2 Gigabytes of memory with current generation memory chips. Overall, the processor can support up to 50 Gbps of peak memory bandwidth. Integrated I/O includes three 10/100/1000 Ethernet MACs configurable to two 16-bit or three 8-bit FIFO interfaces, a 32-bit 33/66 MHz PCI bridge, support for HyperTransport (formerly called LDT), a high-speed I/O bus for chip-to-chip interconnect, two serial interfaces, a generic bus for direct connection to boot flash, PCMCIA support and extensive on-chip debug features.

"The BCM1250 is an integral component of our innovative architecture. The BCM1250 processing solution provides an unprecedented level of power, performance, and flexibility," said Paul Gustafson, President and CEO of Tiburon Networks, an Internet infrastructure company.

The SiByte family of processors complements Broadcom's Internet Protocol (IP) switches, communications Digital Signal Processors, IP security solutions and physical layer transmission products to create the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of products for the networking and Internet infrastructure markets.

Evaluation Board Platform Available

An evaluation board platform, the BCM91250A, complete with firmware, operating systems software, and development tools (GNU-based), is currently available. The board makes use of all the interfaces on the BCM1250, and can be used with any ATX 2.0 compliant case and power supply. Common, off-the-shelf peripherals can be added including PCI graphics adapters, USB keyboards and mice, and ATA hard disks. In addition, the board has provisions for specialized applications including PCMCIA and HyperTransport peripherals.

Three operating systems are supported with the reference platform. The device drivers provided demonstrate how the many modes of the BCM1250 interfaces can be used. These include:

-- VxWorks 5.4 with 64-bit support for data. VxMP (a VxWorks kernel running
independently on each core) is an available option.

-- Linux 2.4 running in 32-bit mode with full SMP support.

-- NetBSD 1.5 running in 32-bit mode. This kernel runs on a single CPU.

"The BCM1250's incredible performance, low power consumption and superior integration are enabling us to build radical new classes of products," said Mark Foster, Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of AgileTV Corporation, a provider of advanced television applications to the cable industry. "In addition, the on-chip JTAG interface and software debug tools from Broadcom allowed us to bring up our firmware as well as Linux in less than two weeks."

Pricing and Availability

Sample pricing for BCM1250 silicon is $649/unit. The BCM1250 is currently scheduled to enter production in the fourth quarter of 2001. The BCM91250 evaluation board platform is currently available.

About Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation is the leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable broadband communications and networking of voice, video and data services. Using proprietary technologies and advanced design methodologies, Broadcom designs, develops and supplies complete system-on-a-chip solutions and related applications for digital cable set-top boxes and cable modems, high-speed local, metropolitan and wide area and optical networks, home networking, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), carrier access, residential broadband gateways, direct broadcast satellite and terrestrial digital broadcast, digital subscriber lines (xDSL), wireless communications, SystemI/O(TM) server solutions and network processing. Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and may be contacted at 949-450-8700 or at www.broadcom.com.

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

This release may contain forward-looking statements that are based on our current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry, and reflect management's beliefs and certain assumptions made by us based upon information available to us at this time. 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 statements speak only as of the date hereof. Such information is subject to change, and we will not necessarily inform you of such changes. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to 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 factors.

Important factors that may cause such a difference for Broadcom in connection with the BCM1250 and BCM91250A products include, but are not limited to, general economic conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address, including the recent significant economic slowdown in the technology sector and semiconductor industry; the timing and successful completion of technology and product development through volume production; the rate at which our present and future customers and end-users adopt Broadcom's technologies and products in the markets for broadband processor equipment; delays in the adoption and acceptance of industry standards in those markets; the timing of customer-industry qualification and certification of our products and the risks of non-qualification or non-certification; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders; the loss of a key customer; the volume of our product sales and pricing concessions on volume sales; the effectiveness of our expense and product cost control and reduction efforts; changes in our product or customer mix; the qualification, availability and pricing of competing products and technologies and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products; intellectual property disputes and customer indemnification claims and other types of litigation risk; the availability and pricing of foundry and assembly capacity and raw materials; fluctuations in the manufacturing yields of our third party semiconductor foundries and other problems or delays in the fabrication, assembly, testing or delivery of our products; our ability to specify, develop or acquire, complete, introduce, market and transition to volume production new products and technologies in a timely manner; the effects of new and emerging technologies; the risks of producing products with new suppliers and at new fabrication and assembly facilities; problems or delays that we may face in shifting our products to smaller geometry process technologies and in achieving higher levels of design integration; the risks and uncertainties associated with our international operations; our ability to retain and hire key executives, technical personnel and other employees in the numbers, with the capabilities, and at the compensation levels needed to implement our business and product plans; the quality of our products and any remediation costs; the effects of natural disasters and other events beyond our control; the level of orders received that can be shipped in a fiscal quarter; and other factors.

Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, recent Current Reports on Forms 8-K and 8-K/A, and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss some of the important risk factors that may affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason.

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