Broadcom Introduces Industry's First Single-Chip DWDM Transport Processor for 10 Gigabit Optical Networks.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

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

Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq:BRCM)

Networking Industry's First Single-chip CMOS Solution to

Integrate All of the Transport Electronics, Including a

Serial 10 Gbps Transceiver; Enables One-Third the Power

and Twice the Port Density of Today's DWDM Equipment

Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq:BRCM), the leading provider of integrated circuits enabling broadband communications, today announced a 10-Gigabit per second (Gbps) Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) Transport Processor. This breakthrough device will alleviate the space and power constraints urgently needed in service providers' central offices by enabling the development of compact, low power DWDM equipment that increases the number of wavelengths to over 200 on an existing, single strand of fiber.

Leveraging its CMOS transceiver and system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology, Broadcom is setting a new industry standard in integration, power reduction and flexibility for transport processing. The Broadcom(R) BCM8511 Transport Processor integrates a digital wrapper, Forward Error Correction (FEC), and a SONET/SDH framer with performance monitoring logic and a serial 10 Gbps transceiver into a single chip. This unprecedented level of integration results in one-third the power and one-quarter the board space requirements of today's most highly integrated competitive alternatives, enabling equipment manufacturers to dramatically increase the port density of their 10 Gbps optical transport equipment. In addition, the high degree of programmability embedded in the chip will enable a new level of network operations and maintenance flexibility unparalleled by today's systems.

DWDM is widely used in long-haul networks for carrying multiple light streams of voice, video and data traffic over a single fiber. As central offices become overcrowded with new and legacy equipment to support increased network traffic, telecommunication carriers are demanding smaller DWDM systems with much higher throughput. Reducing the equipment power consumption is very critical for heat management in crowded facilities. Without smaller, lower power, more efficient equipment, carriers will be forced to purchase or lease additional real estate for new central offices.

The BCM8511 is targeted for use in DWDM transmission equipment and terminals, DWDM regenerators, and DWDM cards on SONET/SDH add/drop multiplexers and cross-connects. Compared to competitive alternative solutions, the BCM8511 reduces the total component count for a DWDM solution from three chips to a single chip. Broadcom's single-chip solution has a power dissipation of only 2.2 Watts. Competitive alternatives dissipate between 6 to 9 Watts, and take up to 4 times more area on the printed circuit board. These power and area savings can directly translate into higher port densities on the line card, thereby enabling higher DWDM channel count while leveraging existing fiber networks.

"As DWDM brings increased bandwidth to existing fiber-optic networks, power and heat management in co-located facilities has become a major concern among service providers," said Allen Leibovitch, Director of Communications Semiconductors at RHK, Inc. "The integration of a transceiver, digital wrapper, and other overhead processing functions into a single chip allows manufacturers to build lower power, high channel count DWDM systems."

The Dell'Oro Group forecasts the worldwide DWDM systems market to grow from $7.4 billion last year to $30.8 billion by 2004, representing a compounded annual growth rate of 43%. During the same period, the number of 10 Gigabit DWDM optical paths is expected to grow more than tenfold, from 46,000 in 2000 to nearly 500,000 by 2004. This represents a total available market of nearly one million units in 2004 for Broadcom's BCM8511 transport processor, as a DWDM path requires two processors in order to terminate the traffic at both ends of the optical path.

"To maintain profitability in today's fiercely competitive telecommunications market, carriers and operators need to increase their network bandwidth capacity while aggressively reducing their network operation costs," said Marty Colombatto, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Networking Business Unit. "To address this bandwidth growth and cost reduction dilemma, we bypassed several silicon integration stages to create a very low power, highly integrated device that aggressively drives down the cost while significantly increasing system bandwidth capacity."

The device supports the emerging International Telecommunications Union (ITU) G.709 recommendation for the Optical Transport Networking (OTN) digital wrapper standard with embedded Forward Error Correction (FEC). The digital wrapper provides a standard method to encapsulate any traffic payload with FEC. This enables transmission over longer network distances without the need to use expensive signal regeneration.

The BCM8511 integrates six major functional blocks, including a digital wrapper encoder and decoder, a FEC encoder and decoder, a 10 Gbps transceiver and a SONET/SDH framer with performance monitoring logic. Each of these blocks can be independently selected or bypassed to accommodate any DWDM regenerator or terminal application. When not in use, the functional blocks can be powered down to minimize power consumption in the application.

Broadcom's BCM8511 integrates a 10 Gbps multi-rate transceiver supporting serial interfaces of 9.953, 10.664 and 10.709 Gbps. The transceiver exceeds all ITU and Telcordia jitter generation performance requirements. It also provides optional parallel 16-bit interfaces operating at 622, 666 or 669 Mbps for some terminal applications.

All digital wrapper Optical Channel overhead bytes can be inserted and extracted, or monitored and reported. In addition, the device can also monitor OTU2 section, path and tandem connection performance, and relevant FEC error statistics. The device integrates a full SONET/SDH framer to support performance monitoring and SONET line and section termination. It can insert and extract section and line transport overhead, including the General Communication Channel (GCC) bytes and Data Communication Channel (DCC) D1-D12 bytes. The framer can monitor and insert the K1/K2 bytes to report or insert all related alarm conditions including Automatic Protection Switch (APS), Alarm Indication Signal (AIS) and Remote Defect Indication (RDI). It can also monitor and report Remote Error Indication (REI) on SONET frames using the M1 byte, as well as monitor and report section trace messages (J0).

The BCM8511 is implemented in a standard 0.18-micron CMOS process, with a single 1.8 Volt power supply, enabling a very low power dissipation of 2.2 Watts. Circuit blocks and functions that are not used in some applications can be automatically powered down to achieve further power savings.

Price and Availability

The BCM8511 is packaged in a 31 mm x 31 mm plastic BGA and is priced at $495 in 50K quantities. The chip is currently sampling to Broadcom's development partners. Production quantities are currently scheduled for availability in October 2001. Broadcom also offers a complete evaluation and design kit, which includes documentation, development boards and related software.

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, System I/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 BCM8511 product 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 10-Gigabit networking products; 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.

Note to Editors: Broadcom(R), the pulse logo(R), and SystemI/O(tm) are trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.