Broadcom Corporation

Broadcom Corporation
Subsidiary
Traded as NASDAQ: BRCM
Industry Semiconductors
Electronics
Fate Became a wholly owned subsidiary of Broadcom Limited after being acquired by Avago Technologies
Founded August 1991 (1991-08)
Founders Henry Nicholas
Henry Samueli
Headquarters Irvine, California, United States
Key people
Products Integrated circuits
Cable converter boxes
Gigabit Ethernet
Wireless networks
Cable modems
Network switches
Digital subscriber line
Server farms
Processors
VoIP
Parent Broadcom Inc.
(since 2016)
Website www.broadcom.com

Broadcom Corporation was an American fabless semiconductor company that made products for the wireless and broadband communication industry. It was acquired by Avago Technologies in 2016 and currently operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of the merged entity Broadcom Inc.

History

1995-2016: Founding and name changes

Broadcom Corporation was founded by professor-student pair Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas from UCLA in 1991. In 1995 the company moved from its Westwood, Los Angeles office to Irvine, California.[1] In 1998, Broadcom became a public company on the NASDAQ exchange (ticker symbol: BRCM) and employs about 11,750 people worldwide in more than 15 countries.

Broadcom is among Gartner's Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by revenue.[2]

Broadcom first landed on the Fortune 500 in 2009.

In 2012, Broadcom's total revenue was $8.01 billion. In 2013, Broadcom stood at No. 327 on the Fortune 500, having climbed 17 places from its 2012 ranking of No. 344.[3]

In May 28, 2015 chip maker Avago Technologies Ltd. agreed to buy Broadcom Corp. for $37 billion in cash and stock. At closing, which completed on February 1, 2016,[4] Broadcom shareholders held 32% of the new Singapore-based company to be called Broadcom Limited. Hock Tan, Avago President and CEO, was named CEO of the new combined company. Dr. Samueli became Chief Technology Officer and member of the combined company's board, and Dr. Nicholas serves in a strategic advisory role within the new company.[5][6] The new merged entity is named Broadcom Limited but inherits the ticker symbol AVGO. The BRCM ticker symbol was retired.

In May 2016 Cypress Semiconductor announced that it will acquire Broadcom Corporation's full portfolio of IoT products for $550 million. Under the deal, Cypress acquires Broadcom's IoT products and intellectual property for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee connectivity, as well as Broadcom's WICED platform and SDK for developers. The deal combined Broadcom's developer tools and connectivity technologies for IoT devices with Cypress' own programmable system-on-a-chip (SoC) products that provide memory, computing and graphics processing for low-power devices.[7]

Qualcomm litigation and settlement

On April 26, 2009, Broadcom settled four years of legal battles over wireless and other patents with Qualcomm Inc., another fabless semiconductor company headquartered in San Diego, California.[8] The deal ended the patent litigation as well as complaints of anti-competitive behavior before trade commissions in the United States, Europe and South Korea. As part of the settlement, Qualcomm paid $891 million in cash to Broadcom over a four-year period ending June 2013.[9]

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 microchips infringe patents owned by Broadcom.[10] In January 2017, the FTC sued Qualcomm for allegedly engaging in unlawful tactics to maintain "a monopoly on cellular-communications chips."[11]

On January 17, 2018, it was reported that the FTC was investigating whether Broadcom had "engaged in anti-competitive tactics in negotiations with customers," in a probe that had been ongoing for several months.[11]

2006-2008: Stock options scandal

On July 14, 2006, Broadcom announced it had to subtract $750 million 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.[12] On January 24, 2007, it announced a restatement of its financial results from 1998 to 2005 that totaled $2.22 billion.[13]

On May 15, 2008, Broadcom CTO Samueli resigned as chairman of the board and took 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 and former CFO William Ruehle were indicted on charges of illegal stock-option backdating. Nicholas was also indicted for violations of federal narcotics laws.[14] However, in December 2009, federal judge Cormac J. Carney threw out the options backdating charges against Nicholas and Ruehle after finding that federal prosecutors improperly tried to prevent three defense witnesses from testifying.[15]

Products

Broadcom produces the system on a chip for the line of popular Raspberry Pi single-board computers.

Broadcom's product line spans computer and telecommunication networking: 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, cable modems, digital subscriber line (DSL), servers, home networking devices (router, switches, port-concentrators) and cellular phones (GSM/GPRS/EDGE/W-CDMA/LTE). 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 or GPG secure communications.

The company also produces ICs for carrier access equipment, audio/video processors for digital set-top boxes and digital video recorders, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi transceivers and RF receivers/tuners for satellite TV. Major customers include Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, IBM, Dell, Asus, Lenovo, Linksys, Logitech, Nintendo, Nokia, Nortel(Avaya), TiVo, Tenda and Cisco Systems. In September 2011, Broadcom shut down its digital TV operations.[16] Broadcom also shut down its Blu-ray chip business. The closure of these businesses began on September 19, 2011.

On June 2, 2014, Broadcom announced intentions to exit the cellular baseband business.[17]

Network interface controllers

Vendors have included Broadcom NICs in their products. For example, Dell PowerEdge M-Series blade-server products may be fitted with Dell-supplied Dual Port Broadcom NetXtreme 5709 Gigabit Ethernet port adapters.[18]

Trident+ ASIC

Another large market is hardware for switches: some vendors offer switching equipment based on Broadcom hardware and firmware (e.g. Dell PowerConnect classics) while other well-known vendors do use the Broadcom hardware but write their own firmware. The latest Broadcom Trident+ ASIC is used in many high-speed 10Gb+ switches from the largest switch-vendors such as Cisco Nexus switches running NX-OS,[19] Dell Force10 (now Dell Networking) running FTOS/DNOS,[20][21] all Arista 7050-series switches,[22] the IBM/BNT 8264, and Juniper QFX3500.[23]

The latest 'member' of the Trident family is the Trident II XGS which can support up to 32 x 40G ports or 104 x 10G ports (or a mix of both) on a single chip.[24][25] Examples of switches using this Trident II XGS chip are the Dell Networking S6000,[26] Cisco Nexus 9000[27] and some smaller vendors like: EdgeCore AS6700, Penguin Arctica 3200XL or QuantaMesh T5032[28]

Graphics processing unit

VideoCore is the GPU found on some systems-on-a-chip (SoC)s by Broadcom, the most widely known one being the BCM2835 containing VideoCore IV found in the Raspberry Pi.

Video acceleration

Broadcom Crystal HD does video acceleration.

WiFi chipsets

Broadcom "BCM43" series chips provide WiFi support in many Android and iPhone devices. Models include the BCM4339 used in phones such as the Nexus 5 (2013) and the BCM4361 used in the Samsung Galaxy S8 (2017). These are SoC devices with a Cortex R4 for processing the MAC and MLME layers and a proprietary Broadcom processor for the 802.11 physical layer.[29] The chips also handle Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth and NFC.[30]

  • Broadcom supplies the WiFi+Bluetooth combo chip for Apple iPhone 3GS and later generations and corresponding iPod touch generations.
  • In Q2 2005, Broadcom Corporation announced it would be providing Nintendo its “online solution on a chip” as deployed in millions of notebooks and PDAs across the globe, enabling Nintendo 802.11b connectivity with DS and 802.11g for the Wii. More specifically, Broadcom would provide Bluetooth connectivity for Wii's controller.
  • In 2013 Broadcom unveiled the first 802.11ac 5G Wifi SOCs which is adopted across many mobile phones including the Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5, the HTC One and the LG Nexus 5. Additionally, routers from Motorola, Netgear, Huawei and Belkin also include Broadcom's 802.11ac chips.

Vulnerabilities in SoC WiFi stack

In April 2017, Google's Project Zero investigated Broadcom's SoC WiFi stack and found that it lacked "all basic exploit mitigations - including stack cookies, safe unlinking and access permission protection," allowing "full device takeover by Wi-Fi proximity alone, requiring no user interaction."[31] Numerous smartphones, such as by Apple, Samsung and Google were affected.[32][33][34]

BroadVoice

Broadcom authored its own VoIP codecs in 2002, and released them as open source with LGPL license in 2009:[35]

  • 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 80,000 bit/s)

Linux products

Some free and 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.[36] Since the release of the 2.6.26 kernel some Broadcom chips have kernel support but require external firmware to be built.

In 2003 the Free Software Foundation accused Broadcom of not complying with the GNU General Public License as Broadcom distributed GPL code in a driver for its 802.11g router chipset without making that code public.

The chipset was adopted by Linksys which was later purchased by Cisco. Cisco eventually published source code for the firmware for its WRT54G wireless broadband router under the GPL-license.[37][38]

In 2012 the Linux Foundation listed Broadcom as one of the Top 10 companies contributing to the development of the Linux Kernel for 2011, placing it in the top 5 percent of an estimated 226 contributing companies. The foundation's Linux Kernel Development report also noted that, during the course of the year, Broadcom submitted 2,916 changes to the kernel.[39] In October, Broadcom released parts of the Raspberry Pi userland under a BSD-style license. According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, this made it "the first ARM-based multimedia SoC with fully functional, vendor-provided (as opposed to partial, reverse-engineered) fully open-source drivers", although due to substantial binary firmware code which must be executing in parallel with the operating system, and which executes independently and prior to loading of the operating system, this claim has not been universally accepted.[40][41]

Broadcom provided a Linux driver for their Broadcom Crystal HD, and they also hired Eric Anholt, a former Intel employee, to work on a free and open-source graphics device driver for their VideoCore IV.

Raspberry Pi

Broadcom organizes the fabrication of the processor chip, most recently the BCM2837 chip and the wifi processor BCM43438, which is used by the charitable Raspberry Pi Foundation.[42] The foundation requested help from Broadcom making the Raspberry Pi card, a motherboard which is free of DRM or corporate control of any kind, which can interact with hardware, and which can be bought and controlled by children.

Business

Notable employees

Manufacturing

Broadcom is known as a fabless company. It outsources all semiconductor manufacturing to Asian merchant foundries, such as GlobalFoundries, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, Silterra, TSMC and United Microelectronics Corporation. The company is based in Irvine, California, in the University Research Park on the University of California, Irvine campus, after a 2007 move from its previous campus near the Irvine Spectrum. It has many other research and development sites including Silicon Fen, Cambridge (UK), Bangalore and Hyderabad in India, Richmond (near Vancouver) and Markham (near Toronto) in Canada and Sophia Antipolis in France.

Acquisitions

In September 2011, Broadcom bought NetLogic Microsystems for a deal of $3.7 billion in cash, excluding around $450 million of NetLogic employee shareholdings, which will transfer to Broadcom.[44]

Besides the NetLogic Microsystems acquisition, through the years, Broadcom has acquired many smaller companies to quickly enter new markets.[45]

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 using telephone wiring, WiFi
June 1999 Armedia Inc. $67.2M in stock Digital Video Decoders[46]
August 1999 HotHaus Technologies $280M in stock DSP 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 chips for VOIP
November 2000 Element 14 $594M in stock DSL chipsets
November 2000 SiByte, Inc $2060M in stock[47] MIPS, Broadband microprocessors
December 2000 Allayer Communications $271M in stock Enterprise and optical networking chips
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 $5.8M in cash Storage-area networks
January 2004 RAIDCore, Inc. $16.5M in cash RAID 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, 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)[48] Xilleon DTV processor chips, software and TV tuners
December 2009 Dune Networks[49] $178M in cash High speed network switches
February 2010 Teknovus[50] $123M in cash Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) chipsets and software
June 2010 Innovision Research & Technology plc[51] $47.5M in cash Near field communication expertise and IP
October 2010 Beceem Communications[52] $316M in cash 4G LTE/WiMax expertise
November 2010 Gigle Networks[53] $75M in cash Multimedia home networking
April 2011 Provigent Ltd.[54] $313M in cash Microwave Backhaul
May 2011 SC Square Ltd.[55] $41.9M in cash Israel-based security software developer
September 2011 NetLogic Microsystems $3.7 billion Next-generation Internet networks
March 2012 BroadLight[56] $230M in cash Israel-based fiber access PON developer
June 2012 Wisair $1M in cash Short-range Wireless data transmission
January 2013 BroadLogic Video encoders/decoders,[57] QAM modulation and wideband receivers.
September 2013 Renesas Mobile Corporation $164M in cash Mobile chipset platforms (LTE-Related Assets)
2013 LSI $6.6 billion[58] Hardware RAID manufacturer
2014 Emulex $609 million[58]
November 2016 Brocade Communications Systems $5.9 billion[58] Network switch manufacturer

Branding

The Broadcom logo was designed by Eliot Hochberg, based on the logo for the company's previous name, Broadband Telecom. The Broadband Telecom logo was designed by co-founder Henry Nicholas' then-wife Stacey Nicholas, who was inspired by the mathematical sinc function.

References

  1. ↑ Kotkin, Joel (January 24, 1999). "Grass Roots Business; A Place To Please The Techies - New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-25.
  2. ↑ Deffree, Suzanne (April 19, 2011). "Broadcom moves on to top 10 list as 2010 semi revenue records more than 30% growth". EDN.com. Archived from the original on December 23, 2011. Retrieved 2011-05-05.
  3. ↑ "Broadcom - Fortune 500 2013 - Fortune". Fortune. May 6, 2013. Retrieved 2013-05-06.
  4. ↑ "Investor Center". Investors.avagotech.com. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  5. ↑ "Avago Agrees to Buy Broadcom for $37 Billion". Wsj.com. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  6. ↑ "Avago Technologies to Acquire Broadcom for $37 Billion". Globenewswire.com. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  7. ↑ BI Intelligence, Business Insider. “Cypress Semiconductor acquires Broadcom's IoT chip business.” May 4, 2016. May 9, 2016
  8. ↑ Jones, Ashby (April 27, 2009). "All Quiet on the Western Front: Broadcom, Qualcomm Reach $891M Deal". Law Blog. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2011-08-06.
  9. ↑ "Qualcomm and Broadcom Reach Settlement and Patent Agreement". Broadcom.com. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  10. ↑ "Qualcomm vs Broadcom - Litigation or Innovation?". Mobile Gazette. Retrieved 2017-11-27.
  11. 1 2 Cimilluca, Dana (January 17, 2018). "FTC Investigates Broadcom Over Negotiations With Customers". The Wall Street Journal. New York City, New York. Retrieved January 18, 2018.
  12. ↑ "Broadcom's Options Bombshell". BusinessWeek. September 9, 2006. Archived from the original on March 23, 2007. Retrieved 2006-09-09.
  13. ↑ "A $2.2 Billion Charge at Broadcom". The New York Times. January 24, 2007. Retrieved 2012-02-15.
  14. ↑ "Drugs, hookers and cranked customers: Ex-Broadcom boss indicted". The Register. June 5, 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-06.
  15. ↑ Flaccus, Gillian. Broadcom backdating case dismissed. Associated Press via San Francisco Chronicle, 2009-12-16.
  16. ↑ Junko Yoshida, EE Times. "Broadcom closes DTV, Blu-ray chip businesses Archived October 6, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.." September 22, 2011. Retrieved October 4, 2011.
  17. ↑ "Investor Center". Investors.avagotech.com. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  18. ↑ "Broadcom 5709 Dual Port GbE I/O Card for M-Series Blades". Dell Inc. Retrieved February 21, 2018.
  19. ↑ Cisco rolls out Nexus 3000, visited January 28, 2012
  20. ↑ The Register on Force10 cranks Ethernet switches to 40 Gigabits, April 23, 2011; visited January 28, 2012
  21. ↑ Jason Edelman Blog on 40 Gbps datacenter switching Archived March 9, 2012, at the Wayback Machine., December 10, 2011. Retrieved May 17, 2012
  22. ↑ The Register: Arista punts 10/40 GbE juice-sipper, visited May 18, 2012
  23. ↑ Lightreading Re:Some Pizza, April 30, 2012. Visited: May 18, 2012
  24. ↑ The Register: Broadcom launches Trident 2 chip, 27 August 2012. Visited: 29 April 2014
  25. ↑ Broadcom presentation/press-release: STRATAXGS® TRIDENT II, created: 24 August 2012. Embargoed till: 28 August 2012. Visited: 28 April 2014
  26. ↑ SDN Central: VMWare bridges NSXS..., published September 2013. Visited: 28 April 2014
  27. ↑ Lippis Report, published on Cisco website:Cisco Nexus 9000, visited: 28 April 2014
  28. ↑ Cumulus Networking 40Gbps Quick Reference Guide Archived April 1, 2014, at the Wayback Machine., visited: 28 April 2014
  29. ↑ Nitay Artenstein (2017-07-26). "Broadpwn: Remotely Compromising Android and iOS via a Bug in Broadcom's Wi-Fi Chipsets". Exodus Intelligence.
  30. ↑ Dong Ngo (2012-01-05). "Broadcom 802.11ac Wi-Fi chips hit CES 2012". CNET.
  31. ↑ "Over The Air: Exploiting Broadcom's Wi-Fi Stack (Part 1)". googleprojectzero.blogspot.co.uk. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
  32. ↑ Conger, Kate. "Project Zero uncovers a nasty Wi-Fi chip exploit". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
  33. ↑ Tung, Liam. "iPhone, Android hit by Broadcom Wi-Fi chip bugs: Now Apple, Google plug flaws - ZDNet". Zdnet.com. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
  34. ↑ "Android devices can be fatally hacked by malicious Wi-Fi networks". Arstechnica.com. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
  35. ↑ "Broadcom offers LGPL Voice Codecs".
  36. ↑ b43 Sipsolutions.net, Linux Wireless
  37. ↑ "Linksys routers caught up in open source dispute". TechTarget. October 20, 2003.
  38. ↑ Lyons, Daniel (October 14, 2003). "Linux's Hit Men - Forbes.com". Forbes. Retrieved January 28, 2012.
  39. ↑ "Linux Kernel Development report". Go.linuxfoundation.org. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
  40. ↑ "Raspberry Pi maker says code for ARM chip is now open source". Ars Technica. Retrieved 3 November 2012.
  41. ↑ "Single-board computers — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software". Fsf.org. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
  42. ↑ "Raspberry Pi Foundation - About Us". Retrieved 2016-01-01.
  43. ↑ Broadcom To Give Rival A Run For Its Money Archived December 11, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.. UTSanDiego.com (2013-05-09). Retrieved on 2013-12-08.
  44. ↑ "Broadcom buys NetLogic for $3.7bn". Retrieved September 12, 2011.
  45. ↑ "A list of acquisitions". Broadcom.com. Archived from the original on April 26, 2015.
  46. ↑ P.J. Huffstutter (June 2, 2009). "Broadcom Acquires Armedia, Maker of Digital Video Decoders". Los Angeles Times.
  47. ↑ Broadcom acquires MIPS core provider SiByte. Design-reuse.com. Retrieved on 2013-12-08.
  48. ↑ "Broadcom Completes Acquisition of Digital TV Business from AMD for $50M less". Broadcom.com. October 28, 2008.
  49. ↑ "Broadcom to buy Dune Networks for butt switches". News.techworld.com.
  50. ↑ "Broadcom to acquire Teknovus". Broadcom.com. March 8, 2010.
  51. ↑ "Broadcom to enter NFC market, buys Innovision for $47.5m". Nearfieldcommunicationsworld.com.
  52. ↑ "Broadcom.com". Broadcom.com. October 13, 2010.
  53. ↑ "Broadcom.com". Broadcom.com. November 22, 2010.
  54. ↑ "Broadcom.com". Broadcom.com.
  55. ↑
  56. ↑ "/ Broadcom Enters Agreement to Acquire BroadLight". Broadcom.com.
  57. ↑ Broadcom snags BroadLogic. Cedmagazine.com (2013-01-30). Retrieved on 2013-12-08.
  58. 1 2 3 Broadcom Takes Next Step in Chipmaker Consolidation. TheStreet (2016-11-02). Retrieved on 2017-11-02.
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