Broadcom Announces Availability of the Industry's First Single-Chip Wi-Fi(R), Bluetooth(R) and FM Solution for Mobile Devices
Friday February 2, 8:00 am ET
Market Leading Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Technologies, Integrated in 65 Nanometer CMOS, Achieves Unprecedented Performance and Power Levels
biz.yahoo.com
IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM - News), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced the industry's most advanced single-chip connectivity solution that combines the company's market-leading Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth® and FM receiver technologies onto a single silicon die. This combination of popular radio capabilities in a new ultra-low power 65 nanometer CMOS system-on-a-chip (SoC) allows OEMs to provide the richest connectivity features without a prohibitive impact on product cost, size or battery life. No other silicon provider can match Broadcom's positions in both the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi markets, or offer the low-power benefits enabled by the advanced 65nm process in which this chip was developed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Mobile handsets, media players and handheld wireless systems have made recent leaps in sophistication, enabling service providers to offer compelling applications such as web browsing, instant messaging, e-mail, advanced multimedia, VoIP phone calls, photo sharing, as well as innovative connected services like weather and personal navigation. Critical to the success of these advanced handheld devices (which are now appearing in the market) are ultra-low power solutions for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other radio technologies that enable an array of connectivity options. Adding multiple additional chips to mobile devices, however, impedes the trend toward increasing compact, low-power products. Until now, integrating these technologies in a single product was challenging since multiple radios in the same band can lead to self-interference. Broadcom has solved these issues with today's product introduction.
"Integrating multiple wireless technologies onto a single chip is a landmark achievement that will be welcomed by mobile device manufacturers due to the inherent cost, space and power savings it will enable," said Stuart Carlaw, Wireless Research Director at ABI Research. "By leveraging its unique expertise in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM radio, Broadcom has broken through a major technical barrier that will help accelerate the feature sets of the next-generation of connected mobile devices."
"Mobile handsets are rapidly evolving into the central point of personal communications, entertainment and information for large numbers of consumers," said Robert A. Rango, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Wireless Connectivity Group. "Our new Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and FM transceiver will help to drive this evolution and enhance devices like digital music players by dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of these key wireless technologies in innovative mobile devices."
Having shipped hundreds of millions of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth products, Broadcom is the only company that can combine these technologies into a single solution that provides the highest level of integration with industry leading hardware and software. Broadcom's integrated solution offers advanced co-existence algorithms to maximize the performance of multiple wireless connectivity options within a single device. Even as FM radio continues to gain momentum in handsets, Broadcom's implementation offers the advanced features required for entertainment and live news broadcast reception in today's handset products.
Announced today is the Broadcom® BCM4325 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM transceiver. This single-chip solution provides the highest level of integration for mobile or handheld wireless systems featuring IEEE 802.11a/b/g (MAC, baseband and radio), support for Bluetooth 2.0 plus enhanced data rate (EDR) that is upgradeable to version 2.1 and an advanced FM receiver. Unlike competing technologies, the BCM4325 was designed in the advanced 65 nanometer process to address the critical challenges within mobile devices. It provides the lowest power, smallest form factor and most robust connectivity, allowing OEMs to drive these wireless technologies into more handset platforms.
Technical Information
Adding both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to small consumer devices, such as mobile handsets, presents significant integration challenges for any silicon provider. The highly integrated BCM4325 design addresses these silicon challenges by reducing the overall footprint size and required external components. The BCM4325 is an ultra-low power solution utilizing advanced design techniques that deliver the lowest active and idle power consumption (up to 40% lower than competitive solutions) combined with a software architecture that offloads the host processor to dramatically extend handheld device battery life and reduce memory requirements.
The BCM4325 utilizes BroadRange(TM) technology, which provides robust range performance to ensure consistent connections to the Wi-Fi access points. The chip also features Broadcom's InConcert(TM) technology, which consists of sophisticated software algorithms and hardware mechanisms that enable collaborative co-existence between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, since both operate in the 2.4 GHz radio frequency range. By integrating Bluetooth with WLAN, the BCM4325 can more intelligently operate both technologies, allowing the option for a shared antenna system to further reduce board area requirements and provide the capability to co-exist with additional external radio technologies.
The BCM4325 also supports all of the rich features included with the Bluetooth 2.0 specifications and is upgradeable to Version 2.1 of the standard. The FM radio receiver supports the European Radio Data Service (RDS) and the North American Radio Broadcast Data Service (RBDS) with superior tuning capabilities.
These unique advances enable the BCM4325 to enhance the overall handset user experience for simultaneous voice, video and data communications on a low power mobile system. In addition, the flexible software architecture simplifies the migration from a single radio connectivity technology (WLAN or Bluetooth) to a multi-radio technology solution, minimizing the software design changes while maximizing reuse of the vast array of mature software available for Broadcom's WLAN and Bluetooth based products.
Availability
The Broadcom BCM4325 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM receiver is now sampling to early access customers. Pricing is available upon request.
Broadcom's Wireless LAN Product Family
Broadcom's high performance AirForce(TM) wireless LAN product line includes 54g® (the world's most popular Wi-Fi technology), and Intensi-fi(TM) (the industry's first draft-802.11n chipsets). In addition to transceiver solutions that provide single- and dual-band wireless connectivity, Broadcom integrates wireless network processors, communications technologies and its OneDriver(TM) software solutions into reference designs that speed customer time-to-market. The industry's leading manufacturers are developing computers, routers, peripherals, phones, broadband modems and a variety of consumer electronics devices connected by Broadcom technologies.
Broadcom's Bluetooth Product Family
Broadcom offers the most complete family of Bluetooth silicon and software solutions for mobile phones, PCs, wireless headphones and headsets, peripherals, gaming and other applications. Broadcom's Bluetooth solutions are widely recognized in the industry as the most widely deployed and feature rich solutions available. The world's largest manufacturers of consumer electronics, mobile phones and personal computer products rely on Broadcom Bluetooth technology to provide their customers with a unique, intuitive and feature rich user experience increasingly free of wires and cables.
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 2005 revenue of $2.67 billion, is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. Broadcom may be contacted at 1-949-926-5000 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 BCM4325 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, including seasonality in sales of consumer products into which our products are incorporated, 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 wireless networking applications; delays in the adoption and acceptance of industry standards in those markets; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders and our ability, as well as the ability of our customers, to manage inventory; the gain or loss of a key customer, design win or order; 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; 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; 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; problems or delays that we may face in shifting our products to smaller geometry process technologies and in achieving higher levels of design integration; 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; our ability to timely and accurately predict market requirements and evolving industry standards and to identify opportunities in new markets; 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, assembly and test 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 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 amended Annual Report on Form 10-K/A for 2005, amended Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q/A for the three months ended March 31, 2006, and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, all filed January 23, 2007, and our 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, 54g®, AirForce(TM), BroadRange(TM), InConcert(TM), Intensi-fi(TM) and OneDriver(TM) are among the trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU. Wi-Fi® is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Bluetooth® is a trademark of the Bluetooth SIG. Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
Broadcom Trade Press Contact
Henry Rael
Public Relations Manager
949-926-5734
hrael@broadcom.com
Broadcom Investor Relations Contact
T. Peter Andrew
Vice President, Investor Relations
949-926-5663
andrewtp@broadcom.com
Broadcom Technical Contacts
David Recker
Sr. Product Line Marketing Manager, Mobile & Handheld Wi-Fi
408-922-8708
drecker@broadcom.com |
