Broadcom Delivers World's First Single-Chip IP Phone Solution.

Business Editors and High-Tech Writers

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 22, 2001

Highly Integrated Ethernet IP Phone Chip Enables Toll-Quality IP

Phones with Industry's Lowest Power Consumption

Broadcom Corporation, (Nasdaq: BRCM), the leading provider of integrated circuits enabling broadband communications, today announced the Broadcom(R) BCM1100 Internet Protocol (IP) Phone Engine, the world's first single-chip solution for enabling Ethernet IP telephones.

The BCM1100 will enable manufacturers to deliver IP phones with the features and price levels required for large-scale deployment of desktop IP telephony. The BCM1100 integrates a number of unique features into a single chip. An Ethernet switch guarantees voice priority, and enables the office PC and IP phone to share a single LAN connection, eliminating the expense of a second LAN drop. The BCM1100 also includes two Ethernet transceivers, and analog codecs for handset and speakerphone support. This additional silicon integration will enable the lowest power IP phones in the industry, making powering over Ethernet cabling a practical reality.

"This innovative product marks Broadcom's entry into the telephony Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) market, and is a natural extension of our networking and VoIP businesses," said Vinod Dham, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Carrier Access Business Unit. "Broadcom has demonstrated its leadership position in enterprise networking with industry firsts in 10/100 and Gigabit chips for physical layer and switch applications, and now is combining those strengths with its technical expertise in VoIP for carrier-class voice gateways, access concentrators, and cable modem residential gateways. The resulting BCM1100 enables the convergence of voice and data across the backbone infrastructure all the way to the office desktop."

"Broadcom's ability to utilize its VoIP technology within highly integrated chips is enabling us to bring to market a new line of IP phones to address the needs of our enterprise customers who are demanding a unified voice and data network," said Masahiko Yamamoto, General Manager of Business Networks Division of NEC Corporation. "We appreciated the opportunity to share our insight into our customers' IP phone requirements during the BCM1100 design phase, and look forward to moving into volume production with the device. Broadcom's experience in the networking market, and their leadership in technology areas that will enable future IP phones, make them a strategic VoIP terminals partner for NEC."

In addition to serving corporate networks, Ethernet backbones are increasingly chosen to deliver broadband access in residential high-rises and other multi-dwelling units. The BCM1100 supports this market by enabling residential VoIP gateways that will connect traditional analog telephones to these Ethernet backbones.

Stefano Martini, General Manager of broadband equipment manufacturer Access Media, said, "Thanks to the BCM1100 and to the joint development work that we did with Broadcom while the chip was being designed, Access Media will be delivering one of the most highly integrated Ethernet access gateways in the world. Using our Fastlink(TM) Access Gateway, residential and Small Office-Home Office (SOHO) end-users will have broadband Ethernet access to the Internet and two IP voice connections, simultaneously on one link. Our first customer, Fastweb, will take advantage of this new Broadcom technology through our Fastlink gateways, which connect customers to Fastweb's fiber-optic network. Fastweb's roll-out plan envisions 2.5 million customers by 2004."

Sam Liang, President of the D-Link Group, commented, "Broadcom has built upon its track record of providing leading edge Ethernet LAN chips, to bring to market the most highly integrated IP phone device available today. The chip enables us to develop an IP phone at previously unattainable price levels. Broadcom's integration of an Ethernet switch and two PHYs also makes the new chip ideal for our residential Ethernet gateway requirements, allowing us to utilize the same device in both phone and gateway applications."

Product Features

In addition to integrating a RISC processor core for protocol handling and a DSP core for signal processing, Broadcom's innovative BCM1100 design incorporates an Ethernet switch and two Ethernet transceivers, enabling it to receive, prioritize, process, and play or forward packets of voice and data over existing corporate 10/100 Base-T networks. The device also integrates wideband-capable analog CODECs, bringing it to a level of integration that can perform the work currently requiring as many as six separate chips. Several phone peripherals are integrated as well, including a keyscan interface, LED interface, serial ports, and an IOM-2(TM) capable TDM port.

Broadcom is raising the bar for voice quality over Ethernet LANs. Voice prioritization is accomplished via IEEE 802.1p Quality of Service (QoS) implemented in the integrated Ethernet switch. QoS coupled with dynamic jitter buffer management and packet loss recovery techniques, within the integrated Broadcom xChange(TM) software, ensures low latency and high-quality voice communication. The integration of an Ethernet switch also means that phones based on the BCM1100 can support connection to an office PC, eliminating the need for a second Ethernet drop to the office.

Broadcom's xChange VoIP software suite is field-proven in applications ranging from large VoIP gateways to voice-enabled cable modems, and is an integral part of the BCM1100. Advanced memory management techniques and the use of object-oriented code in xChange allowed Broadcom to minimize DSP RAM requirements in the BCM1100 to the point where all DSP RAM can be integrated on-chip, eliminating expensive supplemental external DSP SRAM. Vocoder support includes G.711, G.726, G.729A/AB/E, G.723.1/A, and G.728 with an upgrade path to wideband vocoding enabled by the integrated wideband CODECs.

Additional features include support for 3-way conferencing of channels using different vocoders, and half and full-duplex speakerphone functionality. The BCM1100 supports H.323, H.248/Megaco, and SIP protocol stacks, ensuring that phones based on the device will operate seamlessly with a wide range of IP-PBXs. For phones or residential gateways that must communicate with analog fax machines, a T.38 Fax Relay software component is available from Broadcom for the BCM1100.

The BCM1100 is currently sampling to Broadcom's Early Access Partners. The chip is priced below $25 in volume quantities and is offered in a 256-pin plastic BGA package. A related enterprise phone reference design platform, the BCM91100, is offered as part of a separate development package.

About Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation is the leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable broadband digital transmission of voice, video and data. Using proprietary technologies and advanced design methodologies, the company designs, develops and supplies system-on-a-chip solutions for broadband communications markets. Broadcom products enable cable set-top boxes, cable modems, high-speed local, metropolitan, 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, System I/O 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 of Broadcom Corporation 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," "seeks," "estimates," "may," "will" and variations of these words or similar statements 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 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 BCM1100 and BCM91100 products include, but are not limited to, 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 IP phone and networking products; delays in the adoption and acceptance of industry standards in the foregoing markets; the timing of customer-industry qualification and certification of our products and the risks of non-qualification or non-certification; general economic conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address; 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; silicon wafer pricing and the availability of foundry and assembly capacity and raw materials; 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; 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 effectiveness of our product cost reduction efforts; 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; changes in our product or customer mix; 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 Reports 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.

Broadcom(R), xChange(TM) and the pulse logo are trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. IOM-2(TM) is a trademark of Infineon Technologies AG. Fastlink(TM) is a trademark of Access Media spa. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.