BRCM: Broadcom Celebrates 15 Years of Innovation

Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM) today is celebrating 15 years of engineering excellence and product innovation that transformed it from a small start up enterprise in 1991 to a global leader in wired and wireless communications semiconductors. Today, Broadcom stands at the forefront of the communications and convergence revolution, which is changing people's lives as they communicate faster, better and more efficiently from home, at work and on the road.

An early pioneer in the broadband cable industry, with its first solutions developed in a spare bedroom in Southern California, Broadcom has matured into a powerhouse that now supplies original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with a broad range of communications chips. Broadcom® chips are found in broadband communications equipment such as DSL and cable modems, digital cable, satellite and Internet Protocol (IP) set-top boxes, and high definition DVD players and personal video recording devices; in networking infrastructure equipment, which rely on Broadcom switches, controllers, PHYs, security processors, broadband processors, and server I/O chipsets; and in mobile platforms and wireless connectivity devices and equipment such as cellular phones and Wi-Fi routers, employing the latest in mobile multimedia, Voice over IP, Bluetooth® and wireless LAN (WLAN) technologies.

Founded in 1991 by Henry T. Nicholas III and Henry Samueli, each of whom earned a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from UCLA, Broadcom has grown to nearly 4,900 employees with offices in more than 40 countries, expanding from less than 400 employees when the company went public in April 1998. The company has seen annual net revenue grow from 37 million in 1997 to more than $2.6 billion by the end of 2005. Its intellectual property portfolio has grown from two issued U.S. patents and nine patent applications at the time of the IPO to over 1600 issued U.S. patents, and well over 5,000 U.S. and foreign patent applications pending.

"We congratulate our employees, past and present, on a truly remarkable journey of engineering achievement, execution and growth," said Scott A. McGregor, President and Chief Executive Officer of Broadcom Corporation. "The entrepreneurial spirit and competitive drive that has defined Broadcom from the beginning is alive and well today. Broadcom uniquely combines a level of energy and an ability to execute that is usually associated with start ups, with the resources and global influence of a multi-billion dollar powerhouse in the semiconductor industry."

A History of Innovation & Engineering Execution

With over 20 lines of business, Broadcom's broad technology portfolio carries with it a legacy of industry leadership and technology firsts. From the pioneering of the first digital cable set-top boxes in the early 1990's to more recently delivering the world's first 7.2 Mbps true single-chip HSDPA processor for next-generation cell phones, Broadcom has been recognized as a company of industry firsts. Some of the many milestones Broadcom has achieved include:

* First single-chip CMOS tuner
* First single-chip satellite set-top box with integrated tuner
* First AVC/MPEG High Definition (HD) decoder
* First single-chip 20-port 10GbE switch
* First single-chip Wi-Fi® solution
* First single-chip dual-channel HD video/audio/graphics PVR solution
* First singe-chip cable modem with VoIP
* First end-to-end chipset for terrestrial HDTV
* First single-chip Bluetooth + FM Radio with Enhanced Data Rate (EDR)
* First Wi-Fi video phone chipset
* First Wireless LAN 802.11n draft-compliant chipset
* First converged network interface controller that includes a TCP/IP
offload engine (TOE), RDMA clustering, iSCSI storage and remote
management pass-through.


"As impressive as our track record has been, our opportunities for the future are enormous," said Dr. Samueli, who has served as Broadcom's Chief Technical Officer since its founding, and is also Chairman of the Board. "We are unique in the communications chip industry for our combination of IP portfolio, engineering talent and breadth of markets as we help drive the convergence of voice, video and data in the home, business and mobile environments. Our technology and products are ubiquitous, and enable millions of people and businesses around the world to communicate increasingly more information, better and faster."

Founding a Dream

The seed that would eventually grow into Broadcom was planted in the early 1980s when Nicholas and Samueli first met while working on the U.S. Defense Department's Very High-Speed IC (VHSIC) program at TRW, Inc. Their partnership and exchange of ideas continued through the next decade and into other enterprises, including Dr. Samueli's professorship at UCLA's School of Engineering. The Broadcom partnership was made official in August of 1991, when the two engineers, foreseeing the high-speed communications revolution to come, each invested $5,000 to incorporate their own company.

"Broadcom exemplifies the American entrepreneurial spirit," said Dr. Samueli. "A lot of blood, sweat, tears, long hours and personal sacrifice went into making this company as successful as it is. Today we celebrate all of those people, from our employees and their families to our customers, who believed, and still believe, in our vision of connecting everything."

About Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation is a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. Our products enable the delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment. Broadcom provides the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip and software solutions to manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices. These solutions support our core mission: Connecting everything®.

Broadcom, one of the world's largest fabless semiconductor companies with annual revenue of more than $2.5 billion, is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. Broadcom may be contacted at 1-949-450-8700 or at www.broadcom.com.