Broadcom Delivers World's First Single Chip Voice, Video and Data Switch System.

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 15, 1999--

First Product from Maverick Acquisition Delivers

World's First Multi-Layer Switch Chip with 24 Wire

Speed Fast Ethernet and 2 Gigabit Ethernet Ports

Broadcom Corporation, (Nasdaq:BRCM), a leading provider of integrated circuits enabling broadband communications to and throughout the home and business, today announced that it is sampling a breakthrough, wire-speed, multi-layer switch that combines switching, routing and traffic classification functionality into a single monolithic integrated circuit (IC).

Broadcom's innovative StrataSwitch(TM) chip performs the work currently required by as many as 10 separate chips, and is capable of receiving, prioritizing and forwarding packets of voice, video and data at full speed over existing corporate networks. The chip enables systems vendors to deploy an enhanced class of services and applications -- typically found only in the core of the network -- out to every corporate desktop.

"With this revolutionary product, we are seeing the first fruits of our acquisition earlier this year of Maverick Networks, which brought us expertise in high-performance, multi-layer switching technology," said Dr. Henry T. Nicholas III, President and CEO of Broadcom. "Combined with our Digi-PHY(TM) and Gigabit Ethernet products, Broadcom now offers a complete range of silicon solutions for its enterprise switch customers. The StrataSwitch represents a critical milestone on our larger strategic roadmap aimed at enabling the convergence of voice, video and data over existing public and private networks."

The Broadcom(R) StrataSwitch BCM5600 enables systems vendors to cost-effectively deploy a new class of workgroup switch, allowing users to simultaneously access IP telephony, video conferencing, and data services from their desktop.

The StrataSwitch family of products, of which the BCM5600 is the first, is the world's first single-chip solution that incorporates 24 Fast Ethernet and two Gigabit Ethernet ports with advanced Layer 3 switching and multi-layer packet classification. The device performs at 100% of maximum data rates on all Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet ports concurrently. This chip enables manufacturers to easily and economically build the next generation of stackable workgroup switches that prioritize voice, video and other latency-sensitive traffic, ensuring appropriate Quality of Service (QoS) throughout the entire network.

Utilizing a world-class engineering team in combination with its advanced IC design methodology and proprietary compiler tools, Broadcom integrated over 60 million transistors, including a megabyte of high-speed SRAM and a highly sophisticated switching and packet classification engine, into StrataSwitch. The entire design was completed in less than 12 months, and the first revision of silicon is now sampling to Broadcom's Early Access Partners.

"Wiring closet switches that have traditionally only supported Layer 2 will now need to support multi-layer (Layer 2, 3, 4 and beyond) services -- such as traffic classification, protocol filtering, and multicast --- in order to handle and prioritize different types of traffic and deliver QoS to the network edge," said Esmeralda Silva, Senior Analyst for International Data Corporation (IDC). "Just as important, latency and throughput cannot be compromised as these advanced features are utilized. Broadcom's StrataSwitch provides OEM customers with the right combination of cost efficiency and performance required to deliver next-generation services to mainstream workgroup switches."

Mike McConnell of Infonetics added, "End-users are increasingly demanding multi-layer switch functionality in their LAN switch products. Our current market data indicates that 81% of respondents plan on installing Layer 3 switches in their networks by November 2000. This is up dramatically from 59% just six months ago. Interestingly, end-users are not only placing multi-layer switches in their Data Center, but are also placing them in the workgroup wiring closets."

The level of integration and multi-layer switching functionality in StrataSwitch make it the most cost-effective, multi-layer switch design solution for wiring closets or workgroup network applications. Over the past several years, the aggregate wiring closet bandwidth has significantly increased due to the emergence of Fast Ethernet connectivity at the desktop. StrataSwitch employs gigabit technology to accommodate the increase in aggregate bandwidth in two dimensions.

First, to span high-performance switch-to-server and switch-to-data-center connections, StrataSwitch can be coupled with Broadcom's BCM5400 Gigabit Ethernet physical layer (PHY) silicon, thus providing 1000 megabit per second (Mbps) performance over inexpensive pre-existing Category 5 copper cabling.

Second, the StrataSwitch Stacking Links built into each gigabit port cost-effectively accommodate the need to scale wiring closet switch ports as the users in a network increase. This technology allows the network administrator to manage a stack of up to 32 switches as one logical entity.

"Broadcom's StrataSwitch sets new levels of price/performance for a silicon-switch solution while providing the degree of software flexibility normally found in expensive micro-coded solutions," said Greg Wolfson, Broadcom's Switch Product Line Manager. "This unique combination will enable manufacturers to build high-performance, ContentAware(TM) switches at desktop price points."

StrataSwitch Technical Product Information

Broadcom's new switch chip delivers wire-speed Layer 2 forwarding, Layer 3 Internet Protocol (IP) switching and Layer 2 through 7 filtering and traffic classification, as well as four Classifications of Service on every port. The Layer 2 forwarding function supports 24 full-duplex streams of 10/100 Mbps traffic through the downlink ports concurrently with two full-duplex streams of 100/1000 Mbps traffic through the uplink ports. All traffic is forwarded at line rate, resulting in non-blocking performance for all connections.

The Layer 3 IP switching capability also operates at full-wire speeds, allowing a segmented network to route IP traffic at speeds 10 to 100 times faster than traditional routing chassis.

A Layer 2 through 7 fast-filter processor (FFP) operating at line rates on all ports allows the StrataSwitch to inspect and determine the content of each packet. Broadcom's ContentAware classification technology can operate on any information field within the first 64 bytes of each packet to determine the traffic type. Once classified, a packet is assigned a specific class, and is forwarded according to information found within the packet header. Each port has four unique traffic queues to differentiate classes of traffic and prioritize handling based on network policy. This traffic conditioning capability delivers QoS support to the network edge for time-delay sensitive or bandwidth demanding applications, such as Voice over IP (VoIP), video streaming, firewall security, On-line Transaction Processing (OLTP), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications.

Broadcom's StrataSwitch delivers the highest performance switching architecture in its class, providing 9 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of internal bandwidth and over 6.6 million packets per second (Mpps) of filtering capacity whether operating at Layer 2 forwarding, Layer 3 switching or Layer 4 classification. To deliver this unparalleled performance, StrataSwitch integrates all the Layer 2 and 3 address and VLAN tables, and a Cached Buffer Pool for packet buffering.

The chip supports industry-standard interfaces, including RMII for 10/100 Ethernet Transceivers, GMII and TBI for Gigabit Ethernet connections, and PCI or I2C for a processor or serial EEPROM. The device supports from 4 to 64 Mbytes of low-cost SDRAM for external packet buffering.

The Layer 2 switch feature set includes an auto-learning address resolution logic (ARL) with a capacity of 8K media access control (MAC) addresses, 64 IEEE802.1p/Q compliant Virtual Bridged LANs, and mapping of any of the IEEE802.1p classes into one of four queues. The Layer 3 IP switching supports 2K IP addresses and 16 Longest Pre-fetch Match Next Hop Route entries. The Layer 4 classification can implement up to 128 rules operating on eight filters.

Popular switch features such as link aggregation or trunking, port mirroring, IEEE802.3x flow control, and per port RMON registers are also built into the silicon.

Switch Development Support

To accelerate the development of sophisticated multi-layer switch solutions, StrataSwitch is supported with an advanced development platform based on a compact PCI chassis that accommodates off-the-shelf processor cards. The StrataSwitch software driver set includes a high-level application programming interface (API) that is portable across multiple operating system environments. Future firmware releases will include complete multi-layer switch software for turnkey switch system development.

The 600-pin TBGA device is sampling now and will be priced below $100 in volume quantities.

About Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation is a leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable broadband digital transmission of voice, data and video content to and throughout the home and within the business enterprise. Using proprietary technologies and advanced design methodologies, the company designs, develops and supplies integrated circuits for some of the most

significant broadband communications markets, including the markets for cable set-top boxes, cable modems, high-speed office networks, home networking, direct broadcast satellite and terrestrial digital broadcast, and digital subscriber line (xDSL). Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, California, 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 based on our current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry, management's beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us. Words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "may," "will" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These 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 factors.

Important factors that may cause such a difference for Broadcom in connection with the StrataSwitch BCM5600 program include, but are not limited to, the timing and successful completion of technology and product development through production readiness; the timing of customer qualification and industry interoperability certification of new products and the risks of non-qualification or non-certification; the rate at which our present and future customers and end-users adopt new and emerging technologies in the high-speed networking markets; the rate of adoption and acceptance of new industry standards in the foregoing markets; the volume of our product sales and pricing concessions on volume sales; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders; the qualification, availability and pricing of competing products and technologies and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products; wafer pricing and the availability of foundry capacity and raw materials; fluctuations in our manufacturing yields and other problems or delays in the fabrication, assembly, testing or delivery of our products; 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 international operations; intellectual property disputes; our ability to specify, develop, complete, introduce, market and transition to volume production new products and technologies in a timely manner; 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; changes in our product or customer mix; the quality of our products; potential business disruptions, claims, expenses and other difficulties resulting from "Year 2000" problems in computer-based systems used by us, our suppliers or our customers; general economic conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address; and other factors.

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Broadcom(R), StrataSwitch(TM), Digi-PHY(TM), ContentAware(TM) and the pulse logo are trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its subsidiaries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.