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54g™ Enables High-Speed, Long Range, 802.11b-Compliant Products for
Business, Home, and Public Access
Broadcom AirForce™ Product Line Expands Lead as Industry's
Broadest Technology Portfolio With 54g-Enabled Single-Band and Dual-Band
Client and Infrastructure Solutions
LAS VEGAS, COMDEX, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), the leading provider of integrated circuits enabling broadband communications, today announced that it is shipping its new wireless local area networking (LAN) technology that enables 54 megabit per second (Mbps) communications compatible with 802.11b Wi-Fi™ networks. 54g™ is Broadcom's 54 Mbps implementation of the draft specification for IEEE 802.11g wireless networks. It is 802.11b-compliant, Wi-Fi certifiable, and provides laptops, handheld computers and other devices with wireless connectivity at nearly five times the speed of existing technologies operating in the 2.4 GHz radio frequency range, while providing backwards compatibility to the base of more than 30 million installed Wi-Fi (802.11b) devices.
"54g will quickly become the leading technology for wireless local area networking. This technology, specified in the IEEE 802.11g draft standard, will also catalyze significant market growth," said Dr. Henry T. Nicholas, III, President and CEO of Broadcom Corporation. "Broadcom is the first vendor to ship 802.11g technology in both 2.4 GHz single-band and 5 GHz/2.4 GHz dual-band products. As a result, we believe our customers will be in a strong position to deliver superior solutions to all segments of the wireless LAN market."
Broadcom's new offering is a two-chip, all CMOS solution that employs a direct conversion architecture and is the most integrated, highest performing 2.4 GHz solution available in the industry. The new Broadcom® BCM4306 baseband/MAC (media access controller) chip combines with the BCM2050 2.4 GHz radio to enable 54 Mbps connectivity in the 2.4 GHz radio frequency band.
In addition to these new chips, previously announced Broadcom solutions will also support 54g. The BCM4309 is a dual-band baseband/MAC solution that supports the 802.11b, 54g and 802.11a standards across worldwide frequency bands. The BCM4702 wireless network processor will support 54g devices, as well as 802.11a/b/54g dual-band solutions. Broadcom has delivered single-band and dual-band 54g silicon and complete reference designs to major wireless LAN industry vendors who will announce their product portfolios shortly.
54 Mbps at 2.4 GHz Hits the Market Sweet Spot
"Broadcom customers are eager to integrate this next generation 54g technology into their products because it provides higher speed, better range and backwards compatibility at the lowest possible cost," said Jeff Thermond, Vice President of Broadcom's Home and Wireless Networking Business Unit. "In addition, because our MAC and software architecture are common across our entire AirForce™ product line, our customers can bring 54g products to market quickly."
54g provides consumers the benefits of higher speed and greater capacity for a small price premium over 802.11b and adds user capacity to deployments in public places. While some early adopters have seen the benefit of a 54 Mbps data rate in 802.11a products, 54g access points provide up to 2.5 times the high-speed area coverage, and up to 8 times the total area coverage of an 802.11a access point. This enables significant savings to enterprise customers, who can now place single-band or dual-band 54 Mbps access points in the same density as 802.11b access points. "This technology hits the sweet spot of the wireless LAN market," said Alan Nogee of market research firm In-Stat/MDR. "We expect the market will rapidly shift to high speed solutions at 2.4 GHz."
Higher Speeds and Interoperability Today
Broadcom's 54g technology allows consumers and enterprise customers to take advantage today of technology to be incorporated in the forthcoming IEEE 802.11g specification. The 802.11g draft standard specifies the same OFDM modulation technology and data rates found in IEEE 802.11a, but with transmission in the same 2.4 GHz radio frequency band as the 802.11b standard. 54g implements the latest draft of the specification and meets even the highest optional performance requirement specified. As its name suggests, 54g performs at 54 Mbps; the 802.11g draft specification only requires 24 Mbps performance.
In advance of formal approval of the IEEE 802.11g standard and the anticipated Wi-Fi Alliance interoperability procedure, Broadcom is providing a 54g interoperability program to system vendors. Thus end-users can purchase faster wireless LAN products with the confidence that wireless LAN notebooks, PC cards, access points, cable and DSL modems and routers will work together. Information about the 54g certification process and a list of certified products may be found on the Internet at www.54g.org .
AirForce, the Industry's Broadest Wireless LAN Technology Portfolio
The introduction of 54g technology adds to Broadcom's AirForce family of products, expanding Broadcom's lead in providing the broadest product portfolio in the wireless LAN industry. Broadcom provides single and multi-functional integrated circuits that enable end-to-end wireless LAN solutions. The portfolio includes radio, baseband/MAC, wireless network processor, cable modem and DSL silicon as well as client and infrastructure reference designs that enable business and consumer solutions. The BCM4306 also includes a V.92 voice band modem and a glueless interface that connects to Broadcom's family of Bluetooth™ products and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) mobile communications products.
Broadcom's high performance wireless LAN solutions enjoy unique advantages due to their patent-pending SmartRadio™ technology. AirForce radio products are capable of continuous calibration that tunes the wireless LAN radio on the fly, providing optimal performance. SmartRadio solutions also employ wireless echo reduction, which uses sophisticated equalization techniques to improve delay spread tolerance in environments with complex surfaces, such as partitioned offices, airports and homes. In addition, Broadcom's 54g and 802.11a/54g solutions use advanced OFDM, which improves throughput by dynamically adapting to radio noise conditions during the signal decoding process.
Security, Software and Power Consumption Aimed at Enterprise Customers
Broadcom's new solutions provide the enhanced features, performance and software drivers required for the demanding enterprise WLAN market. The software has been extensively tested in system verification test labs at Broadcom and at customer sites. The BCM4306 and the BCM4309 incorporate hardware support for WEP and AES and system support for the leading security protocols, WPA, TKIP and 802.1x, and software can be upgraded to the forthcoming 802.11i security standard.
All AirForce solutions use OneDriver™ software, significantly reducing development time for products across all 802.11 signaling standards. OneDriver™ software blends seamlessly with Microsoft Corporation's Zero-Configuration™ driver for wireless LANs, with added diagnostic capability for Windows® XP™ users, and a common look and feel for legacy Microsoft® operating systems.
Availability
The BCM2050 and BCM4306 are currently in volume production. Complete system reference designs for 54g cardbus, mini PCI, access point and wireless router products are currently available.
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 hardware and software applications for every major broadband communications market. Our diverse product portfolio includes solutions for digital cable and satellite set-top boxes; cable and DSL modems and residential gateways; high-speed transmission and switching for local, metropolitan and wide area networking; home and wireless networking; cellular and terrestrial wireless communications; Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway and telephony systems; broadband network processors; and SystemI/O™ server solutions. These technologies and products support our core mission: Connecting everything®.
Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and may be contacted at 1-949-450-8700 or at www.broadcom.com .
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:
All statements included or incorporated by reference in this release, other than statements or characterizations of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry, management's beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us. Forward-looking statements can often be identified by words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "predicts," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "may," "will," "should," "would," "potential," "continue," similar expressions, and variations or negatives of these words. 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 forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof, and are based upon the information available to us at this time. 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 BCM2050 and BCM4306 products include, but are not limited to, general economic and political conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address, including the continuing significant economic slowdown and volatility in the technology sector and semiconductor industry, trends in the broadband communications markets in various geographic regions, and possible disruption in commercial activities related to terrorist activity or armed conflict in the United States and other locations; 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 high-speed wireless networking applications; delays in the adoption and acceptance of industry standards in those markets; the effects of new and emerging technologies; competitive pressures and other factors such as the qualification, availability and pricing of competing products and technologies and the resulting effects on sales and pricing 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 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 and the ability of our customers to manage their inventories; 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; 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; intellectual property disputes and customer indemnification claims and other types of litigation risk; the availability and pricing of third party semiconductor 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; 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 quality of our products and any remediation costs; the risks and uncertainties associated with our international operations, particularly in light of recent events; the effects of natural disasters, international conflicts 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, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, recent Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss some of the important risk factors that could contribute to such differences or otherwise affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason.
Broadcom®, the pulse logo, Connecting everything®, 54g™, AirForce™, OneDriver™, SmartRadio™ and SystemI/O™ are trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. Wi-Fi™ is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance, Inc. Bluetooth™ is a trademark of the Bluetooth SIG. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
Broadcom Trade Press Contact
Henry Rael
Sr. Communications Specialist
949-585-5734
hrael@broadcom.com
Broadcom Business Press Contact
Bill Blanning
Sr. Director, Corporate Communications
949-585-5555
blanning@broadcom.com
Broadcom Technical Contact
Jeff Abramowitz
Sr. Director, Marketing
408-543-3311
jeffa@broadcom.com
Broadcom Investor Relations Contact
Nick Kormeluk
Director, Investor Relations
949-585-6932
nickk@broadcom.com SOURCE Broadcom Corporation
-0- 11/18/2002
/CONTACT: Trade Press, Henry Rael, Sr. Communications Specialist, +1-949-585-5734, hrael@broadcom.com , or Business Press, Bill Blanning, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications, +1-949-585-5555, blanning@broadcom.com , or Technical, Jeff Abramowitz, Sr. Director, Marketing, +1-408-543-3311, jeffa@broadcom.com , or Investor Relations, Nick Kormeluk, Director, Investor Relations, +1-949-585-6932, nickk@broadcom.com , all of Broadcom/
/Web site: http://www.54g.org /
