Broadcom
Encyclopedia
Fabless semiconductor company
A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication or "fab" of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry...
in the wireless and broadband communication business. The company is headquartered in Irvine, California
Irvine, California
Irvine is a suburban incorporated city in Orange County, California, United States. It is a planned city, mainly developed by the Irvine Company since the 1960s. Formally incorporated on December 28, 1971, the city has a population of 212,375 as of the 2010 census. However, the California...
, USA. Broadcom was founded by a professor-student pair Henry Samueli
Henry Samueli
Henry Samueli is co-founder, senior vice president, and chief technology officer of the Broadcom Corporation, owner of the Anaheim Ducks, and a prominent philanthropist in the Orange County, California community. In 2007 Forbes placed Samueli's net worth at $2.3 billion. He currently resides in...
and Henry T. Nicholas III from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) at Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
in 1991. In 1995, the company moved from its Westwood, California
Westwood, California
Westwood is a census-designated place in Lassen County, California, United States. Westwood is located west-southwest of Susanville, at an elevation of 5128 feet...
, office to Irvine, California.
In 1998, Broadcom became a public company
Public company
This is not the same as a Government-owned corporation.A public company or publicly traded company is a limited liability company that offers its securities for sale to the general public, typically through a stock exchange, or through market makers operating in over the counter markets...
on the NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
exchange (ticker symbol: BRCM) and now employs approximately 9,690 people worldwide in more than 15 countries.
Broadcom is among Gartner's Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by revenue. In 2010, Broadcom's total revenue was $6.82 billion. In 2011, Broadcom was No. 343 on the Fortune 500
Fortune 500
The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect. The list includes publicly and...
, climbing 117 places from its 2010 ranking of No. 460. Broadcom first landed on the Fortune 500 in 2009.
Products
Broadcom's product line spans computerComputer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
and telecommunication networking
Telecommunications network
A telecommunications network is a collection of terminals, links and nodes which connect together to enable telecommunication between users of the terminals. Networks may use circuit switching or message switching. Each terminal in the network must have a unique address so messages or connections...
: the company has products for enterprise/metropolitan high-speed networks, as well as products for SOHO (small-office, home-office) networks. Products include transceiver and processor ICs for Ethernet and wireless LANs
Local area network
A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...
, cable modem
Cable modem
A cable modem is a type of network bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a HFC and RFoG infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high...
s, digital subscriber line (DSL), servers, home networking devices (router, switches, port-concentrators) and cellular phones (GSM
Global System for Mobile Communications
GSM , is a standard set developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to describe technologies for second generation digital cellular networks...
/GPRS
General Packet Radio Service
General packet radio service is a packet oriented mobile data service on the 2G and 3G cellular communication system's global system for mobile communications . GPRS was originally standardized by European Telecommunications Standards Institute in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode...
/EDGE
Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution
Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution is a digital mobile phone technology that allows improved data transmission rates as a backward-compatible extension of GSM...
/W-CDMA
W-CDMA
W-CDMA , UMTS-FDD, UTRA-FDD, or IMT-2000 CDMA Direct Spread is an air interface standard found in 3G mobile telecommunications networks. It is the basis of Japan's NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service and the most-commonly used member of the UMTS family and sometimes used as a synonym for UMTS...
). It is also known for a series of high-speed encryption co-processors, offloading this processor-intensive work to a dedicated chip, thus greatly speeding up tasks that utilize encryption. This has many practical benefits for e-commerce, and PGP
Pretty Good Privacy
Pretty Good Privacy is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security...
or GPG
GNU Privacy Guard
GNU Privacy Guard is a GPL Licensed alternative to the PGP suite of cryptographic software. GnuPG is compliant with RFC 4880, which is the current IETF standards track specification of OpenPGP...
secure communications.
The company also produces ICs for carrier access equipment, audio/video processors for digital set-top box
Set-top box
A set-top box or set-top unit is an information appliance device that generally contains a tuner and connects to a television set and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen or other display device.-History:Before the...
es and digital video recorders, Bluetooth
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...
and Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
transceivers, and RF receivers/tuners for satellite TV. Major customers include Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
, Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
, Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
, Lenovo, Linksys
Linksys
Linksys by Cisco, commonly known as Linksys, is a brand of home and small office networking products now produced by Cisco Systems, though once a separate company founded in 1995 before being acquired by Cisco in 2003...
, Logitech
Logitech
Logitech International S.A. is a global provider of personal peripherals for computers and other digital platforms headquartered in Romanel-sur-Morges, Switzerland. The company develops and markets products like peripheral devices for PCs, including keyboards, mice, microphones, game controllers...
, Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
, Nokia Siemens Networks
Nokia Siemens Networks
Nokia Siemens Networks is a global data networking and telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Espoo, Finland. It is a joint venture between Nokia of Finland and Siemens of Germany...
, Nortel
Nortel
Nortel Networks Corporation, formerly known as Northern Telecom Limited and sometimes known simply as Nortel, was a multinational telecommunications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada...
(Avaya
Avaya
Avaya Inc. is a privately held computer networking, information technology and telecommunications company that is a global provider of business communications systems. The international head quarters is in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, United States...
), TiVo
TiVo
TiVo is a digital video recorder developed and marketed by TiVo, Inc. and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose features include "Season Pass" schedules which record every new episode of a series, and "WishList"...
and Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
. In September of 2011, Broadcom shut down its digital TV operations. Broadcom also shut down its Blu-ray chip business. The closure of these businesses began on SEptember 19, 2011.
Consumer design components
Broadcom also provides components for a number of high-profile consumer devices:- Broadcom supplies the WiFi+Bluetooth combo chip for Apple iPhone 3GS and iPod touch second generation.
- In Q2 2005, Broadcom Corporation announced it would be providing Nintendo its “online solution on a chip” as deployed in millions of notebooks and PDAsPersonal digital assistantA personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...
across the globe, enabling Nintendo 802.11b connectivity with DSNintendo DSThe is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
and 802.11g for the WiiWiiThe Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
. More specifically, Broadcom would provide BluetoothBluetoothBluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...
connectivity for WiiWiiThe Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
's controller.
Notable employees
- Henry SamueliHenry SamueliHenry Samueli is co-founder, senior vice president, and chief technology officer of the Broadcom Corporation, owner of the Anaheim Ducks, and a prominent philanthropist in the Orange County, California community. In 2007 Forbes placed Samueli's net worth at $2.3 billion. He currently resides in...
- Gottfried UngerboeckGottfried UngerboeckGottfried Ungerboeck is an Austrian communications engineer.Ungerboeck received an electrical engineering degree from Vienna University of Technology in 1964, and a Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, in 1970...
, inventor of trellis coded modulationTrellis modulationIn telecommunication, trellis modulation is a modulation scheme which allows highly efficient transmission of information over band-limited channels such as telephone lines... - Henry T. Nicholas III
- Sophie WilsonSophie WilsonSophie Wilson is a British computer scientist. She is known for designing the Acorn Micro-Computer, the first of a long line of computers sold by Acorn Computers Ltd, as well as the instruction set of the highly successful ARM processor.- Life and career :...
, designer of the ARMARM architectureARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...
CPU instruction set
Broadcom and Linux
Some open source drivers are available and included in the Linux kernel source tree for the 802.11b/g/a/n family of wireless chips Broadcom produces. Since the release of the 2.6.26 kernel some Broadcom chips have kernel support but require external firmware to be built.Manufacturing
Broadcom is known as a fabless companyFabless semiconductor company
A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication or "fab" of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry...
. It outsources all semiconductor manufacturing to Asian merchant foundries
Foundry
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminum and cast iron...
, such as GlobalFoundries
GLOBALFOUNDRIES
GlobalFoundries Inc. is the world's third largest independent semiconductor foundry, with its headquarters located in Milpitas, California. GlobalFoundries was created by the divestiture of the manufacturing side of AMD on March 2, 2009, and was expanded through its merger with Chartered...
, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, is a semiconductor foundry in mainland China, providing integrated circuit manufacturing services at 350 nm to 45nm technologies...
, Silterra, TSMC
TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited or TSMC is the world's largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry, with its headquarters and main operations located in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan.-Overview:...
, and United Microelectronics Corporation
United Microelectronics Corporation
UMC was founded as Taiwan's first semiconductor company in 1980 as a spin-off of the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute .-Overview:...
. The company is based in Irvine, California
Irvine, California
Irvine is a suburban incorporated city in Orange County, California, United States. It is a planned city, mainly developed by the Irvine Company since the 1960s. Formally incorporated on December 28, 1971, the city has a population of 212,375 as of the 2010 census. However, the California...
in the University Research Park on the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
campus, after a 2007 move from its previous campus near the Irvine Spectrum. It has many other research and development sites including Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
, Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
(UK), Bangalore
Bangalore
Bengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...
and Hyderabad in India, Richmond
Richmond, British Columbia
Richmond is a coastal city, incorporated in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Part of Metro Vancouver, its neighbouring communities are Vancouver and Burnaby to the north, New Westminster to the east, and Delta to the south, while the Strait of Georgia forms its western border...
(near Vancouver) and Markham
Markham, Ontario
Markham is a town in the Regional Municipality of York, located within the Greater Toronto Area of Southern Ontario, Canada. The population was 261,573 at the 2006 Canadian census...
(near Toronto) in Canada, and Sophia Antipolis
Sophia Antipolis
Sophia Antipolis is a technology park northwest of Antibes and southwest of Nice, France. Much of the park falls within the commune of Valbonne. Created in 1970-84, it houses primarily companies in the fields of computing, electronics, pharmacology and biotechnology. Several institutions of higher...
in France.
Stock options scandal
On July 14, 2006, Broadcom announced it had to subtract $750,000,000 from earnings due to stock options irregularities. On September 8, 2006 the amount was doubled to $1.5 billion. The company may also owe additional taxes. On January 24, 2007, it announced a restatement of its financial results from 1998 to 2003 that totaled $2.24 billion.On May 15, 2008, Samueli, Broadcom CTO, resigned as chairman of the board and took of a leave of absence as Chief Technology Officer after being named in a civil complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
On June 5, 2008, Broadcom co-founder and former CEO Henry Nicholas
Henry Nicholas
Henry Thompson “Nick” Nicholas, III , is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist and leader of the victims’ rights movement. He is the co-founder, and former Co-Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Broadcom Corporation, a Fortune 500 company.Nicholas served Broadcom in...
and former CFO William Ruehle were indicted on charges of illegal stock-option backdating
Options backdating
Options backdating is the practice of issuing options contracts on a later date than that which the options have listed. While options backdating is not, in and of itself, an illegal practice, intentional backdating that coincides with low underlying stock prices and accounting reports that claim...
. Nicholas was also indicted for violations of federal narcotics laws. However, in December 2009, federal judge Cormac J. Carney
Cormac J. Carney
-Early life and education:Carney was born in Detroit, Michigan to Irish immigrant parents. He was raised in Long Beach, California, where he attended St. Anthony High School. Carney received a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1983 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1987. He...
threw out the options backdating charges against Nicholas and Ruehle after finding that federal prosecutors improperly tried to prevent three defense witnesses from testifying.
Qualcomm Litigation and Settlement
On April 26, 2009, Broadcom settled four years of legal battles over wireless and other patents with QualcommQualcomm
Qualcomm is an American global telecommunication corporation that designs, manufactures and markets digital wireless telecommunications products and services based on its code division multiple access technology and other technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA...
Inc., another fabless semiconductor company headquartered in San Diego, California
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
, USA.
The deal ended the patent litigation as well as complaints of anti-competitive behavior before trade commissions in the U.S., Europe and South Korea. As part of the settlement, Qualcomm is paying $891 million in cash to Broadcom through April of 2013.
In June 2007, the U.S. International Trade Commission blocked the import of new cell phone models based on particular Qualcomm microchips. They found that these Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Qualcomm is an American global telecommunication corporation that designs, manufactures and markets digital wireless telecommunications products and services based on its code division multiple access technology and other technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA...
microchips infringe patents owned by Broadcom.
GPL violation
In 2003, the Free Software FoundationFree Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
accused Broadcom of violating the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. Broadcom distributed GPL code in a driver for its 802.11g router chipset without making that code public; a violation of terms of the GPL. The chipset was adopted by Linksys
Linksys
Linksys by Cisco, commonly known as Linksys, is a brand of home and small office networking products now produced by Cisco Systems, though once a separate company founded in 1995 before being acquired by Cisco in 2003...
which was later purchased by Cisco
Cisco
Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...
. Cisco eventually published source code for the firmware for its WRT54G wireless broadband router.
BroadVoice
Broadcom authored its own VoIP codecs in 2002, and released them as open source with LGPL license in 2009:- BroadVoice 16 with declared bitrate 16 kbit/s and audio sampling frequency 8 kHz
- BroadVoice 32 with declared bitrate 32 kbit/s and sampling rate of 16 kHz (note however that X-Lite SIP phone's menu declares bitrate 80000 bit/s)
Acquisitions
In September 2011, Broadcom bought NetLogic MicrosystemsNetLogic Microsystems
NetLogic Microsystems, Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company that sells networking processors and integrated circuits.On September 12, 2011, Broadcom announced it would acquire NetLogic for $3.7 billion ....
for a $3.7 billion deal in cash, excluding around $450 million of NetLogic employee shareholdings, which will transfer to Broadcom.
Besides a big deal above, through the years, Broadcom has acquired many smaller companies to quickly enter new markets.
| Date | Acquired company | Amount | Expertise |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1999 | Maverick Networks | $104M in Stock | Multi-layer switches for corporate networks |
| April 1999 | Epigram | $316M in stock | Home networking HomePNA The HomePNA Alliance is an incorporated non-profit industry association of companies that develops and standardizes technology for home networking over the existing coaxial cables and telephone wiring within homes.-Overview:HomePNA does not manufacture products, although its members do... using telephone wiring |
| June 1999 | Armedia Inc. | $67.2M in stock | Digital Video Decoders |
| August 1999 | HotHaus Technologies | $280M in stock | DSP Digital signal processing Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing... software for VOIP |
| August 1999 | Altocom | $180M in stock | Software modem software |
| January 2000 | BlueSteel Networks | $123M in stock | Security processors |
| March 2000 | Digital Furnace Corp | $136M in stock | Data compression software |
| March 2000 | Stellar Semiconductor | $162M in stock | 3D graphics processors |
| June 2000 | Pivotal Technologies | $242M in stock | Digital video chips |
| July 2000 | Innovent Systems | $500M in stock | Bluetooth radios |
| August 2000 | Puyallup Integrated Circuit Company | IC design and IC macro blocks | |
| July 2000 | Altima Communications | $533M in stock | Networking chips |
| October 2000 | Newport Communications | $1240M in stock | 10Gbit Ethernet transceivers |
| October 2000 | Silicon Spice | $1000M in stock | DSP Digital signal processor A digital signal processor is a specialized microprocessor with an architecture optimized for the fast operational needs of digital signal processing.-Typical characteristics:... chips for VOIP |
| November 2000 | Element 14 | $594M in stock | DSL chipsets |
| December 2000 | Allayer Communications | $271M in stock | Enterprise and optical networking chips |
| December 2000 | Sibyte | $2000M in stock | Broadband microprocessors |
| January 2001 | VisionTech, Ltd. | $777M in stock | MPEG-2 compression/decompression of PVRs |
| January 2001 | ServerWorks Corp. | $1003M in stock | I/O controllers for servers and workstations |
| July 2001 | PortaTec Corporation | Mobile devices | |
| July 2001 | Kimalink | Wireless and mobile ICs | |
| May 2002 | Mobilink Telecom, Inc. | $5.6M shares of stock | Baseband processors for cellphones |
| March 2003 | Gadzoox Networks | $5.8M in cash | Storage-area networks |
| January 2004 | RAIDCore, Inc. | $16.5M in cash | RAID RAID RAID is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit... software |
| April 2004 | M-Stream Inc. | $8.7M in cash and 27000 shares of stock | Technology to improve wireless reception |
| April 2004 | Sand Video, Inc. | $77.5M in stock and $7.4M in cash | Video compression technology |
| April 2004 | WIDCOMM, Inc. | $49M in cash | Software for Bluetooth systems |
| April 2004 | Zyray Wireless, Inc. | $96M in stock | Baseband processors for WCDMA |
| September 2004 | Alphamosaic Alphamosaic Alphamosaic Ltd was a UK semiconductor company specialising in low power mobile multimedia processors, based on their VideoCore architecture. Alphamosaic was spun out of its parent company, Cambridge Consultants Ltd, by Robert Swann and Steve Barlow in 2000.... , Ltd. |
$123M in stock | Video processors for mobile devices |
| February 2005 | Alliant Networks, Inc. | Cellular gateway products | |
| March 2005 | Zeevo, Inc. | $26.4M in cash and $2.6M in stock | Bluetooth headset products |
| July 2005 | Siliquent Technologies, Inc. | $76M in cash | 10Gbit Ethernet interface controllers |
| October 2005 | Athena Semiconductors, Inc. | $21.6M in cash | Digital TV tuners and Wifi technology |
| January 2006 | Sandburst Corporation | $75M in cash and $5M in stock | SOC chips for Ethernet packet switching |
| November 2006 | LVL7 Systems, Inc. | $62M in cash | Networking software |
| May 2007 | Octalica, Inc. | $31M in cash | Multimedia Over Coax technology |
| June 2007 | Global Locate, Inc. | $146M in cash | GPS chips and software |
| March 2008 | Sunext Design, Inc. | $48M in cash | Optical disk drive technologies |
| August 2008 | AMD (DTV Processor Division) | $141.5M in cash (Original deal was $192.8M) | Xilleon Xilleon The Broadcom Xilleon video processor is a 32-bit system-on-a-chip MIPS processor, for use in set-top boxes and digital TVs, providing MPEG2 decoding and other functions for major worldwide broadcast networks .The Xilleon line consists of four products, models 210D/H, 226,... DTV processor chips, software and TV tuners |
| December 2009 | Dune Networks | $178M in cash | High speed network switches |
| February 2010 | Teknovus | $123M in cash | Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) chipsets and software |
| June 2010 | Innovision Research & Technology plc | $47.5M in cash | Near field communication expertise and IP |
| October 2010 | Beceem Communications | $316M in cash | 4G LTE/WiMax expertise |
| November 2010 | Gigle Networks Gigle Networks Gigle Networks was a provider of high performance system-on-a-chip semiconductor devices and intelligent switching technology for home network, IPTV, consumer electronics and smart grid applications. The company is based in Barcelona, Spain, Edinburgh, UK, and Redwood City, California.Gigle was a... |
$75M in cash | Multimedia home networking |
| April 2011 | Provigent Ltd. | $313M in cash | Microwave Backhaul |
| May 2011 | SC Square Ltd. | $41.9M in cash | Israel-based security software developer |
| September 2011 | NetLogic Microsystems NetLogic Microsystems NetLogic Microsystems, Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company that sells networking processors and integrated circuits.On September 12, 2011, Broadcom announced it would acquire NetLogic for $3.7 billion .... |
$3.7 billion | Next-generation Internet networks |
External links
- Broadcom homepage
- 20th Century History of Broadcom corporation
- Broadcom Analysis on Wikinvest