Broadcom® Wireless LAN Solutions Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ for WPA2™

IRVINE, Calif., Sep 1, 2004 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions enabling broadband communications, today announced that its AirForce™ wireless LAN access point and client reference designs are among the first products to be Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ for WPA2™ (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2). Driven by the Wi-Fi Alliance, WPA2 certification ensures that wireless LAN products based on Broadcom® AirForce™ chipsets are interoperable with other products implementing WPA2 security features. The Wi-Fi Alliance has also chosen Broadcom's popular IEEE 802.11a/g access point reference design (the BCM94712P) and 802.11g CardBus reference design (the BCM94306M) to be used in the certification process for other Wi-Fi® products in the WPA2 test environment.

"WPA2 is the next major step towards securing Wi-Fi networks for business, government and home applications," said David Cohen, Senior Marketing Manager for Broadcom's Home & Wireless Networking Business Unit. "Broadcom is proud to be among the first vendors to have its products certified for WPA2, and will continue to provide equipment manufacturers with the latest building blocks to meet the security requirements of all Wi-Fi customers."

WPA2 is the next-generation Wi-Fi security standard, combining the most powerful authentication and encryption techniques to protect wireless networks from unauthorized use. Based upon the recently-ratified IEEE 802.11i standard, WPA2 adds the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to the original WPA™ specification to provide the greatest levels of network security available. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) advocates the use of AES security to protect sensitive digital information on government networks.

All 802.11g and 802.11a/g Wi-Fi products shipped based on Broadcom technology feature an on-chip AES encryption/decryption engine, which maintains maximum performance when running the computationally-intensive AES algorithm. Thanks to this built-in hardware support, all new and existing products based on Broadcom's wireless LAN solutions can be upgraded to the new WPA2 standard with a simple software download. In contrast, products attempting to run software-based AES are likely to experience severe performance degradation and may require costly hardware changes or full product replacement to properly employ the 802.11i security standard.

"The ratification of 802.11i by the IEEE and the Wi-Fi Alliance's certification process for WPA2 will be a boost to the enterprise Wi-Fi market," said Phil Solis, wireless analyst from ABI Research. "Those Wi-Fi IC vendors who have already been including hardware-based AES implementations in their designs will be able to provide firmware upgrades to existing customers to implement WPA2 without a performance hit."

By becoming one of the first vendors to achieve WPA2 certification, Broadcom continues to offer the industry's broadest portfolio of security features. Its AirForce reference designs were also part of the original WPA test bed, and among the first products to be Wi-Fi CERTIFIED for WPA. To simplify Wi-Fi security for consumers, the company recently introduced SecureEZSetup™, a unique software wizard that automates the configuration of WPA settings for products based on Broadcom technology. For enterprise Wi-Fi users, Broadcom offers certified support for Cisco Compatible Extensions (versions one and two), providing additional security, network management and roaming features that are compatible with the Cisco Aironet® wireless LAN infrastructure.

"Leading companies like Broadcom are committed to WPA2 as an industry-wide security solution," said Wi-Fi Alliance Managing Director, Frank Hanzlik. "Its commitment to this interoperability initiative, along with many others in the industry, underscores the broad level of support for this important security enhancement."

WPA2 is designed to be backward compatible with the original WPA standard, while extending the level of data protection. Both standards use IEEE 802.1x and Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) authentication techniques, but WPA2 supplants the original Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) encryption with the more powerful Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Because the latter is part of the IEEE 802.11i standard and required for certain government applications, WPA2 will likely be adopted by corporate and government customers. However, WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access™) will continue to play a valuable role in meeting the security needs for many Wi-Fi users.

Broadcom's AirForce™ Wireless LAN Product Family

Broadcom's high performance wireless LAN product line includes 54g™, the world's most popular Wi-Fi technology. In addition to transceivers that provide IEEE 802.11g and dual-band 802.11a/g solutions, Broadcom integrates wireless network processors, communications technologies and OneDriver™ software solutions into reference designs that speed customer time to market. Broadcom also offers the AirForce One™ family of single-chip 802.11b and 802.11g solutions to enable embedded Wi-Fi connectivity in a wide variety of mobile devices. Broadcom partners are developing 54g™ Wi-Fi client solutions, access points, routers, switches, cable modems, DSL modems, VoIP phones, Bluetooth® solutions and GPRS cellular products.

About Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation is a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor solutions that enable broadband communications and networking of voice, video and data services. We design, develop and supply complete system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions incorporating digital, analog, radio frequency (RF), microprocessor and digital signal processing (DSP) technologies, as well as related hardware and software system-level applications. Our diverse product portfolio addresses every major broadband communications market and includes solutions for digital cable and satellite set-top boxes; high definition television (HDTV); cable and digital subscriber line (DSL) modems and residential gateways; high-speed transmission and switching for local, metropolitan, wide area and storage networking; home and wireless networking; cellular and terrestrial wireless communications; Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway and telephony systems; broadband network and security 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, 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 our AirForce wireless LAN 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 wireless 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 products and services; 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 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; 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; 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 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®, 54g™, AirForce™, AirForce One™, OneDriver™, SecureEZSetup™ and SystemI/O™ are trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. Wi-Fi®, Wi-Fi Protected Access™ , Wi-Fi Protected Access 2™, WPA™ and WPA2™ are trademarks of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Cisco Aironet® is a trademark of Cisco Systems, Inc. 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
Sr. Communications Specialist
949-926-5734
hrael@broadcom.com

Broadcom Business Press Contact
Bill Blanning
Sr. Director, Corporate Communications
949-926-5555
blanning@broadcom.com

Broadcom Technical Contact
Jeff Abramowitz
Sr. Director, Marketing
408-543-3311
jeffa@broadcom.com

Broadcom Investor Relations Contact
T. Peter Andrew
Sr. Director, Investor Relations
949-926-5663
andrewtp@broadcom.com

SOURCE Broadcom Corporation

Trade Press, Henry Rael, Sr. Communications Specialist, +1-949-926-5734, hrael@broadcom.com, or Business Press, Bill Blanning, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications, +1-949-926-5555, blanning@broadcom.com, or Technical, Jeff Abramowitz, Sr. Director, Marketing, +1-408-543-3311, jeffa@broadcom.com, or Investor Relations, T. Peter Andrew, Sr. Director, Investor Relations, +1-949-926-5663, andrewtp@broadcom.com, all of Broadcom Corporation

http://www.broadcom.com