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TAIPEI, Taiwan, Computex 2005, June 1, 2005 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in wired and wireless broadband communications semiconductors, today announced the latest additions to its market leading StrataXGS III™ family of switches, the 100 Series and the 300 Series. The new StrataXGS III switches feature advanced capabilities for the cost-conscious small-to-medium sized business (SMB) market. These next generation features include integrated security, application-aware Quality of Service (QoS) that guarantees reliable Voice over IP (VoIP) services, and intelligent stacking technology that requires minimal management.
The new StrataXGS III 100 Series and 300 Series are optimized for SMB and small-to-medium enterprise (SME) networks, enabling system vendors to take advantage of next generation, enterprise-class features at SMB price points. Based on a similar feature set announced for the StrataXGS III 500 Series in January 2005, the 100 Series and 300 Series also include cost-optimized support for wireless LAN (WLAN) switching, IPv6 routing and resiliency.
One of the major advantages that the 100 Series and 300 Series offer for SMB applications is their ability to stack multiple switches together, creating one switch entity that requires minimal management. This stacking approach uses Broadcom® HiGig™ technology, which is fully compatible with all generations of StrataXGS® switches.
Wire-speed stacking in hardware enables cost-sensitive SMB switch users to preserve their investments in their Broadcom Ethernet switches and supports a "pay-as-you-grow" architecture, enabling users to start with a single switch and then scale to the number of desired ports without compromising performance. This single point of management reduces operating costs, improves employee productivity and supports innovative services reliably and securely. Intelligent stacking technology is a powerful capability not available in competitive SMB products.
Having the largest Ethernet switch product portfolio in the industry has enabled Broadcom to specialize and offer unprecedented features and cost for a given application. The company has already announced four new StrataXGS III series of switch chips since the beginning of 2005, the 100 Series, 300 Series, 500 Series and 600 Series, which yield cost, performance and functionality that is optimized for SMB, enterprise, data center and carrier networks, respectively. Benefiting from a common architecture and Application Programming Interface (API), customers can deliver multiple products with a single development effort. Broadcom continues to provide silicon that is ideal for end-to-end standalone, stackable, modular and embedded switching solutions.
"With our new StrataXGS III 100 Series and 300 Series switches, we launch a new class of secure, converged and reliable switch solutions for small and medium sized business networks," said Martin Lund, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Networking Switch Line of Business. "Using a single unified switch architecture, we enable our customers to build differentiated systems for a full range of applications and target markets with reduced investment and faster time-to-market."
StrataXGS III 100 and 300 Series Features
To support the variety of SMB switches currently available, small footprints, low power and support for various port configurations are required. The StrataXGS III 100 Series and 300 Series feature a host of switch chips that meet this objective. The 100 Series feature 24 Fast Ethernet (FE) ports and up to 4 high-speed uplink ports. The 300 Series feature 24 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) ports and up to 4 high-speed uplink ports. In addition to stacking, the high-speed uplinks provide fast connectivity to local applications or storage devices, reducing network time delays when services are being accessed. This results in an improved user experience and increased efficiency.
Small-to-medium sized businesses increasingly rely on their networks to perform business operations that require high availability of data. With the increasing rate of viruses and attacks on all networks, SMBs are being forced to deploy new infrastructures to keep their networks secure and to ensure no disruption to their ongoing operations. The StrataXGS III 100 Series and 300 Series switches address these needs by integrating a hardware-based Denial of Service (DoS) attack prevention engine in every chip. This attack prevention engine is critical to providing continuity of uninterrupted services while preventing the loss of information or revenue that can result from network disruptions.
New VoIP services that offer reduced calling charges are increasing in popularity, especially to cost-sensitive SMB users. From an SMB network perspective, utilizing both voice and data services from a single subscription reduces maintenance and management, and enables the business to perform at lower costs, raise productivity and create new operating efficiencies. To satisfy these new requirements for converged networking, the 100 Series and 300 Series switches offer optimized application-aware QoS that ensures high-availability to real-time VoIP traffic.
To achieve low cost SMB system designs, the StrataXGS III architecture's high level of integration and low power dissipation per port enable the 100 Series and 300 Series chips to fit into space and power-constraint environments. This reduces the number of PCB layers, voltage rails and cooling required, as well as associated costs.
The new generation of StrataXGS III switches provides a common API that maintains compatibility with previous generations of Broadcom switch devices, including ROBOswitch™, StrataSwitch® and StrataXGS switches. This enables customers to leverage six years of robust driver software development from Broadcom while reducing system development time, accelerating time-to-market and protecting their initial software investments. Broadcom also offers complete software development kits (SDK) and reference designs for the StrataXGS III product family including software, schematics, layout files and related documentation.
Pricing and Availability
The StrataXGS III 100 Series (consisting of the BCM56100, BCM56101 and BCM56102) and the 300 Series (consisting of the BCM56300, BCM56301, BCM56302, BCM56303 and BCM56304) are currently sampling to Broadcom's early access customers. Pricing is available upon request.
About Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation is a global leader in wired and wireless broadband communications semiconductors. Our products enable the convergence of high-speed data, high definition video, voice and audio at home, in the office and on the go. Broadcom provides manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices with the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip and software solutions. These solutions support our core mission: Connecting everything®.
Broadcom is one of the world's largest fabless semiconductor companies, with annual revenue of more than $2 billion. The company is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., with offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. Broadcom 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 and business, management's beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us, all of which are subject to change. Forward-looking statements can often be identified by words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "predicts," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "may," "will," "should," "would," "could," "potential," "continue," "ongoing," similar expressions, and variations or negatives of these words. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statement.
Important factors that may cause such a difference for Broadcom in connection with the StrataXGS III Ethernet switch products include, but are not limited to, general economic and political conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address, including the 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 rate at which our present and future customers and end-users adopt Broadcom's technologies and products in the markets for enterprise networking applications; delays in the adoption and acceptance of industry standards in those markets; our ability to scale our operations in response to changes in demand for our existing products and services or demand for new products requested by our customers; intellectual property disputes and customer indemnification claims and other types of litigation risk; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders and our ability, as well as the ability of our customers, to manage inventory; our ability to retain, recruit and hire key executives, technical personnel and other employees in the positions and numbers, with the experience and capabilities, and at the compensation levels needed to implement our business and product plans; our ability to timely and accurately predict market requirements and evolving industry standards and to identify opportunities in new markets; our ability to specify, develop or acquire, complete, introduce, market and transition to volume production new products and technologies in a cost-effective and timely manner; the gain or loss of a key customer, design win or order; 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; the timing of customer-industry qualification and certification of our products and the risks of non-qualification or non-certification; changes in our product or customer mix; the volume of our product sales and pricing concessions on volume sales; 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; the effects of new and emerging technologies; 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 effectiveness of our expense and product cost control and reduction efforts; the risks and uncertainties associated with our international operations, particularly in light of recent events; the effects of natural disasters, public health emergencies, 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 the foregoing risks as well as other important risk factors that could contribute to such differences or otherwise affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. The forward-looking statements in this release speak only as of this date. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason.
Broadcom®, the pulse logo, Connecting everything®, the Connecting everything logo, ROBOswitch®, StrataSwitch®, StrataXGS®, HiGig+™ and StrataXGS III™ are among the trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU. Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
Broadcom Trade Press Contact
Scott Harlin
Public Relations Manager
949-926-5226
sharlin@broadcom.com
Broadcom Investor Relations Contact
T. Peter Andrew
Sr. Director, Investor Relations
949-926-5663
andrewtp@broadcom.com
Broadcom Technical Contact
Seow Lim
Director of Strategic Marketing
408-501-8440
seowl@broadcom.com
SOURCE Broadcom Corporation
Trade Press, Scott Harlin, Public Relations Manager, +1-949-926-5226, sharlin@broadcom.com, or Investor Relations, T. Peter Andrew, Sr. Director, Investor Relations, +1-949-926-5663, andrewtp@broadcom.com, or Technical, Seow Lim, Director of Strategic Marketing, +1-408-501-8440, seowl@broadcom.com, all of Broadcom Corporation
