Mindspeed Launches Comcerto Secure VoIP Carrier Convergence Processor.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 22, 2004

Industry's Highest-Density Voice-Over-Packet Processor Combines

Voice Encryption, Authentication and Denial-of-Service Protection

with Carrier-Class Performance

Mindspeed Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq:MSPD), a leading supplier of semiconductor solutions for network infrastructure applications, today announced the first device in its new family of Comcerto(TM) voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) convergence processors. The industry's highest-density voice processor, the Comcerto Carrier Convergence Processor M82710 offers telecommunications equipment manufacturers a single device that can seamlessly transmit highly secure, carrier-class quality voice across wireless and wireline networks with integrated voice encryption, authentication and denial-of-service (DoS) protection.

The Comcerto M82710 delivers two gigahertz of digital signal processing (DSP) power and is capable of processing more than 500 channels of secure carrier-class VoIP for wireline applications. For wireless applications, the Comcerto M82710 can process more than 100 channels of Mindspeed's patented CDMA selectable-mode-vocoder (SMV) technology, which enables the highest-quality and lowest bit rate wireless transmission of any voice coder on the market. It also offers a complete suite of voice codecs and protocols for GSM and W-CDMA wireless networks.

"With Comcerto, Mindspeed offers the industry's most integrated and fully featured family of VoIP processors for converging voice and data networks," said Raouf Halim, chief executive officer of Mindspeed. "With advanced security features and our patented SMV technology, the Comcerto M82710 provides our telecommunications equipment customers with an extremely powerful and versatile VoIP processor to enable compact and cost-effective systems across a full range of wireline and wireless voice protocols and architectures."

The worldwide deployment of VoIP and the resulting convergence of voice and data traffic on IP networks makes protecting the integrity and reliability of the transmissions critical. This protection includes encrypting calls to prevent illegal eavesdropping, authenticating transmissions to guard against tampering, and deflecting DoS attacks.

"The security of voice calls is now more critical than ever, and our integrated encryption processing makes VoIP calls more secure today than calls carried over traditional phone networks," said Michael Metzger, executive director of marketing at Mindspeed. "In addition, the Comcerto M82710 is capable of authenticating traffic and monitoring all channels against abnormally high transmission rates typical in a DoS attack."

The Comcerto architecture is optimized for VoIP applications with separate signal and packet-processors, and a programmable software suite developed over multiple generations. The flexibility and performance of Comcerto offers network infrastructure equipment manufacturers a significant time-to-market advantage by integrating security and other VoIP features in the device, with the ability to add additional features through software upgrades.

"With cost reductions for VoIP gear remaining a key concern for continued migration in the market, wired and wireless infrastructure OEMs will likely need to adopt more integrated chipset approaches in order to dramatically reduce bill-of-material costs going forward," said Sean Lavey, program manager for market research firm IDC. "This trend should bode well for semiconductor vendors such as Mindspeed, which is one of the few suppliers that produces optimized chip solutions targeted for these high channel density VoIP designs."

The Comcerto M82710 is a complete VoIP system-on-a-chip with integrated signaling support and a comprehensive range of wireline and wireless voice coders, enabling equipment manufacturers to build systems capable of processing voice and data over converged wireline voice-over-packet and 3G wireless networks. With the ability to process up to 512 simultaneous carrier-class voice channels, it offers the industry's highest channel density per-square-inch in a 19mm fine pitch ball grid array (FPBGA) package. The device combines DSP cores, programmable packet processors, and streaming packet interfaces to provide the power and flexibility to bridge multiple voice networks.

The Comcerto M82710 incorporates the latest version of Mindspeed's field-proven echo canceller and patented intelligent speech transcoding technology that minimizes delay time between multiple wireless and wireline protocols.

Adopted by 3GPP2 and the Telecommunications Industry Association as the next-generation speech-coding standard for wireless communications, Mindspeed's SMV technology is the only compression/decompression (codec) standard capable of delivering toll quality at a sub-4 Kbps operating range. With its multiple standardized operating modes, SMV technology offers network operators the unique ability to quickly and seamlessly increase capacity or control network congestion.

The Comcerto M82710 is fully hardware- and software-compatible with Mindspeed's previous-generation Miro M82610 carrier-class voice processor designed into telecommunications equipment by multiple OEMs worldwide. This compatibility allows equipment manufacturers to seamlessly migrate from the M82610 to the M82710, achieving even higher performance and integration with minimal system development time.

Mindspeed's Comcerto family of communications convergence processors is optimized for a variety of telecommunications equipment including voice and media gateways, optical network terminals (ONTs) and optical line terminals (OLTs) for passive optical networks (PON), wireless base transceiver stations (BTSs) and Node-Bs, base station controllers (BSCs), radio network controllers (RNCs), mobile switching centers (MSCs), digital loop carriers (DLCs), digital subscriber line access multiplexers (DSLAMs), Class 4 and 5 switches, integrated access devices (IADs), IP private branch exchanges (PBXs), ATM switches and IP routers.

Technical Details

Mindspeed's Comcerto M82710 Carrier Convergence Processor delivers the highest level of system integration and performance in the industry, and is optimized for next-generation wireline and wireless voice-over-packet applications. The M82710 combines a powerful superscalar DSP architecture optimized for voice processing, a flexible packet-processing engine, and a high-performance security processor, as well as a wide array of industry-standard streaming interfaces including universal test and operations physical-layer interface for ATM (UTOPIA), packet over synchronous optical networks (POS) and Ethernet.

Together with Mindspeed's robust, industry-proven software, the M82710 represents a true carrier-class system-on-chip solution for VoIP and voice-over-ATM (VoATM) AAL1, AAL2 and AAL5 applications in next generation wireline; and GSM, CDMA2000 and W-CDMA wireless networks. An extensive software suite supports G.711, G.723.1, G.726, G.728, G.729a/b/e, QCELP8K, QCELP13K, EVRC, SMV, GSM FR/EFR, AMR and AMR-WB voice codecs, as well as T.38 Fax Relay and Modem Relay. It supports packet-to-TDM, packet-to-packet, or TDM-to-TDM operation across the entire range of IP and ATM protocols and modulations. Dedicated signaling TDM busses provide transparent transport and processing of CAS telephony signaling between the TDM and packet networks.

The M82710's security processor performs RC4, AES, DES & 3DES voice payload encryption, secure RTP encapsulation and MMH and SHA-1 authentication. A sophisticated net filter implementation protects all active voice calls from DoS attacks.

The M82710 supports a large suite of wireless communications protocols including complete implementations of tandem-free operation (TFO) as well as transcoder-free operation (TrFO) for both W-CDMA and CDMA2000-based networks. Its DSP cores are architected to maximize the density of SMV (IS-893), the latest speech coder used in CDMA2000 networks. Additional software features include enhanced 64-way conferencing, media forking for CALEA, Caller ID detection and generation and announcement server functions.

The M82710 is both pin- and API-compatible with the M82610, Mindspeed's previous generation of carrier-class voice processors.

Pricing and Availability

The Comcerto M82710 processor is sampling now and will be available in production quantities in the third calendar quarter of 2004. It is packaged in a 19mm FPBGA and priced at $399 per unit in OEM volumes of 10,000.

About Mindspeed Technologies Inc.

With headquarters in Newport Beach, Mindspeed Technologies designs, develops and sells semiconductor networking solutions for communications applications in enterprise, access, metropolitan and wide area networks.

The company's four key product families include high-performance analog transmission and switching solutions, multiservice access products designed to support voice and data services across wireline and wireless networks, T/E carrier physical-layer and link-layer devices, and ATM/MPLS network processors.

Mindspeed's products are used in a wide variety of network infrastructure equipment including voice and media gateways, high-speed routers, switches, access multiplexers, cross-connect systems, add-drop multiplexers and digital loop carrier equipment.

To learn more, visit the company at www.mindspeed.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains statements relating to Mindspeed, including with respect to our future results, which include certain projections and business trends and are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results, and actual events that occur, may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: market acceptance of and demand for the company's new and existing products; the company's ability to reduce its cash consumption; successful development and introduction of new products; design wins; pricing pressures and other competitive factors; order and shipment uncertainty; fluctuations in manufacturing yields; product defects and compatibility issues with the products of our customers and their customers; intellectual property infringement claims by others; as well as other risks and uncertainties, including those detailed from time to time in the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.