Full Description

Broadcom Corporation (Broadcom), incorporated in August 1991, is a provider of semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. Broadcom provides a portfolio of system-on-a-chip (SoC) and software solutions to manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices. Its product portfolio includes solutions for digital cable, satellite and Internet potocol (IP) set-top boxes and media servers; high definition television (HDTV); high definition digital versatile discs (DVD) players and personal video recording (PVR) devices; cable and digital subscriber lines (DSL) modems and residential gateways; high-speed transmission and switching for local, metropolitan, wide area and storage networking; server solutions; broadband network and security processors; wireless and personal area networking; cellular communications; global positioning system (GPS) applications; mobile multimedia and applications processors; mobile power management, and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) gateway and telephony systems.

In February 2008, the Company acquired Sunext Design, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Sunext Technology Corporation, Ltd., which specialized in the design of optical storage semiconductor products. In October 2008, it acquired the digital TV business of Advance Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), which designs and markets applications and communications processors for the digital television market.

Broadband Communications

The Company offers manufacturers a range of broadband communications and consumer electronics SoC solutions that enable voice, video, data and multimedia services over residential wired and wireless networks. During the year ended December 31, 2008, the net revenue from its broadband communications target market represented 37% of its total net revenue. The Company offers integrated semiconductor solutions for cable modems and CMTS equipment, with a product offering for the high-speed, two-way transmission of voice, video, data and multimedia services to residential customers. Its complete system-level solutions include integrated circuits, reference design hardware and a software suite to support its customers’ needs.

The Company provides end-to-end DSL technology, with solutions designed for both customer premises equipment (CPE), and central office applications. Its DSL solutions enable local exchange carriers and enterprise networking vendors to deliver bundled broadband services, such as digital video, high-speed Internet access, VoIP, video teleconferencing and IP data business services, over existing telephone lines. For CPE applications, it provided products that address a variety of local area network (LAN) connectivity options, including Ethernet, universal serial bus (USB)-powered solutions, VoIP-enabled access devices and wireless access points with multiple Ethernet ports. It also offers a silicon platform for the digital cable-TV set-top box (STB) market. These integrated SoCs give manufacturers a range of features and capabilities for building standard digital cable-TV STBs for digital video broadcasting, as well as interactive STBs.

The Company has developed direct broadcast satellite (DBS) solutions. These products include an advanced, high definition video graphics subsystem, which drives the audio, video and graphic interfaces in DBS set-top boxes and provides multi-stream control to support PVR capabilities; a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) satellite tuner, which allows its customers to provide additional channel offerings; front-end receiver chips for set-top boxes, including 65 nanometer receivers that incorporate PVR functionality, and an advanced modulation system to increase satellite capacity, and a digital visual interface transmitter. In addition, it offers a complete end-to-end chipset for receiving and displaying HDTV. Broadcom provides a family of advanced video compression, high definition SoC solutions for IP set-top boxes. These solutions include high definition video decoder/audio processor chips and a dual channel high definition and personal video recorder chip.

The Company offers a complete digital television receiver system targeted at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s digital-to-analog converter box program. Broadcom also supports the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) technology that allows users to share and access digital media easily across a variety of wired and wireless connectivity technologies, such as Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) Wi-Fi and Ethernet. Its Blu-ray Disc SoC offers HD video playback at 1080p resolution, picture-in-picture video support, HD multi-channel audio, and BD-Java performance for full support of BD-Live functionality. It also offers a reference design for the development of Blu-ray Disc media players that includes its HD audio/video decoder chip, as well as an HD digital video system chip and a software platform that affords its customers a range of integration options.

Enterprise Networking

The Company designs and develops complete silicon and software solutions for service provider, data center, enterprise and small-to-medium business (SMB) networks. Its products are found in a variety of networking equipment, including Ethernet switches, routers and gateways, security appliances, DSLAMs, 3G/4G wireless backhaul equipment, cable and VoIP hardware, desktop and notebook computers, servers and storage appliances, and network-attached printers. Its line of highly integrated, low power SoC solutions includes Ethernet transceivers, controllers and switches for servers, workstations, desktop and notebook computers, VoIP phones, switches and routers, wireless access points and network infrastructure products.

The Company’s Ethernet transceivers are built upon a digital signal processing (DSP) communication architecture optimized for high-speed enterprise network connections. Its DSP silicon core enables interoperability and robust performance over a range of cable lengths and operating conditions. Its product line offers a variety of single port and multi-port products ranging from 10 megabits per second up to 10 gigabits per second speeds. Built upon multiple generations of Ethernet media access controller technology, the Company’s NetXtreme family of Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) controllers supports peripheral component interconnections (PCI), PCI-X and PCI Express local bus interfaces, for use in NIC and LOM implementations. Its NetXtreme II family of Ethernet controllers consists of converged network interface controllers (C-NICs), which are designed to improve server performance by integrating a TCP/IP offload engine, remote direct memory access, iSCSI storage and remote management.

The Company offers switch-on-a-chip product line ranging from unmanaged and managed, Layer 2 to high-end managed, Layer 3 through Layer 7 enterprise class switch chips. It also offers high-end metro Ethernet scalable switch solutions with applications that include Carrier Ethernet switches and routers, next generation transport equipment, synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH) telecommunications equipment and Ethernet access equipment. Its Carrier Ethernet switch portfolio offers a feature set that enables carrier/service provider networks to support a large number of high value services, such as VoIP, IPTV, video-on-demand, HDTV and Internet gaming. In addition, it provides networking software that enables communications system manufacturers to reduce development costs and deliver IP/Ethernet products to market faster.

Optical communications components are an extension of the Company’s portfolio of high-speed LAN chips, and allow it to provide end-to-end semiconductor solutions across the WAN, MAN and LAN. The Company offers a portfolio of CMOS OC-48 and OC-192 transceiver and forward error correction solutions, chips for synchronous optical networks and dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) applications, as well as a serial CMOS transceiver for 10GbE applications. Custom silicon products are devices for applications that customers are able to semi-customize by integrating their own intellectual property with the Company’s intellectual property cores. It has deployed such devices into the LAN, WAN and PC markets.

Mobile & Wireless

Broadcom’s mobile and wireless products allow manufacturers to develop devices that enable end-to-end wireless connectivity at home, at work and on-the-go. Products include solutions in wireless market segment, including wireless local area networking, personal area networking, location technologies, and a range of mobile technologies. This portfolio of mobile and wireless products enables a range of portable devices, including cellular handsets, personal navigation devices, mobile TV products, portable media players, gaming platforms and other wireless-enabled consumer electronics and peripherals, such as home gateways, printers, VoIP phones, home entertainment systems and notebook computers.

The Company offers a family of Wi-Fi chipsets that supports all Wi-Fi standards, IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g, as well as the draft standard, 802.11n. It offers a family of Bluetooth silicon and software solutions for mobile phones, PCs, wireless headphones and headsets, digital televisions, peripherals, gaming and other applications. The Company’s Blutonium family of single-chip Bluetooth devices and software applications and protocol stacks provides a complete solution that enables manufacturers to add Bluetooth functionality to almost any electronic device with a minimal amount of development time and resources.

The Company develops and markets global system for mobile communication (GSM), general packet radio services (GPRS), enhanced data rates for GSM evolution (EDGE), universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) chipsets, and reference designs with complete software and terminal solutions for use in cellular phones, cellular modem cards and smartphones. Its CellAiritytm cellular platform includes baseband processor solutions, which integrate both mixed signal and digital functions into a single chip, such as its single-chip HSPA processor phone-on-a-chip solution. In conjunction with its CellAirity hardware solution, the Company offers full software solutions for a variety of operating systems to enable complete phone designs by its customers.

The Company maintains a worldwide GPS reference network that provides assistance data to A-GPS-equipped chips through wireless transport, including cellular data channels (GPRS or 3G) and Wi-Fi, boosting performance and reducing the time required to determine a location by up to 100 times. To support multimedia features, including imaging, graphics, camera image capture, audio capture, music playback, music streaming, video streaming, video capture, gaming, mobile TV, and more, Broadcom offers a line of video and multimedia processors based on a low power, high performance architecture referred to as VideoCore.

The Company’s family of mobile application processors, which integrate its VideoCore multimedia processor and an ARM RISC processor, software, and reference designs, enable an array of multimedia features, including support for high megapixel digital cameras, HD video encoding and decoding, and TV signal output via composite, component and S-video connections. Its mobile applications processors also support advanced mobile device applications, such as e-mail, Web browsing, file management and graphical user interfaces. Its IP phone silicon and software solutions integrate packet processing, voice processing and switching technologies. Its VoIP portfolio also features terminal adapter VoIP solutions that enable existing analog phones to be connected to broadband modems through Ethernet.