NEC Selects Mindspeed Switch Fabric for Family of Edge Router Products.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 11, 2002

Mindspeed's Field-Proven iScale(TM) Switch Fabric Delivers the

Performance and Scalability to Support NEC's Broadband Edge Switch

Router Family

Mindspeed Technologies(TM), the Internet infrastructure business of Conexant Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CNXT), today announced that NEC Corp. has selected its iScale(TM) switch fabric chipset for the NEC CX4200 Series of broadband edge switch routers.

The iScale switch fabric is a key element in enabling the robust capacity and features of the CX4200 series.

"Our CX4200 Series Broadband Edge Switch Router family is designed to allow telecommunications carriers, Internet service providers and cable service operators to provide fast, reliable access and value-added services to their customers.

"Mindspeed's iScale switch fabric, with its integrated SkyRail(TM) SerDes links, delivers the wire-speed performance, IPv6 network software support and carrier-class reliability demanded by these sophisticated and diverse customers," said Akifumi Yonehara, chief manager of the IP Technologies Development Division at NEC.

"We are proud to have our iScale switch fabric shipping today in NEC's edge router systems to carriers worldwide," said Elie Massabki, executive director of marketing for Mindspeed. "iScale is the most integrated and scalable switch fabric in the market. It is in production and delivering superior performance in equipment from major suppliers such as NEC."

Mindspeed's iScale chipset is a highly scalable solution with a modular architecture that enables manufacturers to design a compact switch card capable of linearly increasing in bandwidth from 20 Gbps to 320 Gbps. The iScale architecture cleanly partitions line card and switch card functions so that the line card design is independent of the fabric switching capacity.

As a result, no line card modifications are required when increasing system capacity. In addition to preserving customer investments in line cards, iScale allows system designers to standardize on one architecture for different sizes of equipment or multiple system generations.

The iScale switch fabric architecture delivers high throughput and low latency with an internal double speed-up factor between the queue manager and crossbar switches, and bundled serial links providing port over-speed between the fabric chipset and line cards.

Unlike other architectures that offer a port speed-up by load balancing traffic between two switch cards, iScale offers the speed-up 100 percent of the time, which is critical when one of the switch cards is being serviced. All iScale switch fabric components are protected by 1+1 redundancy.

Additionally, iScale simplifies backplane design by only requiring trace routing to support the nominal port data rate through the backplane. Alternative solutions require all payload speed-up routing through the backplane resulting in 50 percent more links.

Mindspeed provides iScale reference designs including schematics and PCB layout databases for various switch fabric configurations to help reduce customer development effort.

The protocol-agnostic iScale switch fabric chipset supports all types of data traffic, including IP, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH). It also supports time division multiplexing (TDM), frame relay, multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), label switching and tag switching for a broad range of wide-area, metropolitan-area and storage-area networking equipment.

About Mindspeed Technologies

Mindspeed Technologies(TM), the Internet infrastructure business of Conexant Systems, Inc., designs, develops and sells semiconductor networking solutions for communications applications that extend from the edge of the Internet through linked metropolitan networks.

Key products include voice-band processor solutions designed to support voice and data services across wireline and wireless networks, T/E carrier physical- and link-layer products, and ATM/MPLS network processors; complemented by multi-megabit DSL and high-speed SerDes transceivers, crosspoint switches, and lower-speed SONET optical networking PMDs.

Mindspeed products are used in a wide variety of networking equipment including digital loop carriers, remote access concentrators, add-drop multiplexers, high-speed routers, ATM switches, dense wave division multiplexers, optical switches and digital cross-connect systems.

With headquarters in Newport Beach, Mindspeed employs approximately 800 people with design centers and sales offices worldwide. To learn more, visit the company at www.mindspeed.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This news release contains statements relating to future results of Conexant (including certain projections and business trends) that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: global economic and market conditions, such as the cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry and the markets addressed by the company's and its customers' products; demand for and market acceptance of new and existing products; successful development of new products; the timing of new product introductions; the availability of manufacturing capacity; pricing pressures and other competitive factors; changes in product mix; product obsolescence; the ability to develop and implement new technologies and to obtain protection for the related intellectual property; the successful separation of the company's broadband communications and Internet infrastructure businesses; the ability to attract and retain qualified personnel; and the uncertainties of litigation, as well as other risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to the security and safety risks of our employees and of company facilities and those risks and uncertainties 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.

Note to Editors: Conexant and Mindspeed are trademarks of Conexant Systems, Inc. Other brands and names contained in this release are the property of their respective owners.