Broadcom Delivers World's First CMOS TV Tuner

Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a leading provider of integrated circuits enabling broadband communications to and throughout the home and business, today introduced and demonstrated the world's first complete digital-analog RF television tuner in CMOS. The tuner chip is part of a family of advanced tuner products from Broadcom that will dramatically improve the component count, cost and reliability of the tuner function in a wide variety of consumer devices such as televisions, video recorders, cable modems, set-top boxes and PC/TV devices.The BroadcomÆ BCM3400 family of tuners will enable manufacturers for the first time to use a single tuner chip to replace current tuner designs that incorporate up to 200 discrete components and are housed in bulky VHF/UHF tuner ""cans."" The result is dramatically lower cost, reduced power consumption and improved reliability of the devices that use these chips.The BCM3400 family of tuner products represents the first use of low-cost Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) processing to implement all of the radio frequency (RF) functions of a television tuner. The core technology, bandwidth and performance these chips deliver are critical for future generations of voice, video and data products.Broadcom is sampling BCM3400 family products to a number of key consumer device manufacturers.""With this level of integration, manufacturers can employ one or more tuners in a wide range of consumer devices such as televisions, digital video recorders, cable modems and set-top boxes,"" said Allen Leibovitch, Product Manager, Semiconductor Research for IDC's Consumer Devices program. ""This technology leapfrogs other vendors of tuner ICs who are using more expensive manufacturing technologies and puts Broadcom in an excellent position to address a worldwide market approaching, by some estimates, 300 million units per year.""""Our CMOS television tuner brings new levels of cost benefits and integration to one of the last markets dominated by discrete RF component-based solutions,"" said Dr. Henry T. Nicholas III, Broadcom's President and CEO. ""We have proven our ability to cost-effectively integrate various pieces of silicon technology in the cable modem, digital set-top and high-speed corporate networking markets. Now we're logically and strategically extending these core competencies into the development of RF tuners. RF CMOS technology allows us to leverage all of our existing expertise in low-cost, high-volume manufacturing and apply it to a wide range of new markets.""The addition of the tuner function completes Broadcom's suite of components required to build cable modems and advanced digital cable set-top boxes. Broadcom now has complete silicon solutions that span from input connector to output connector, including RF tuners, QAM-based receivers and transmitters, cable modem protocol engines, advanced graphics processors, audio/video encoders and decoders, RISC microprocessors and high-speed home networking products.""The BCM3400 family of products are the first commercial RF CMOS VLSI chips ever developed,"" said Dr. Henry Samueli, Broadcom's Chief Technical Officer. ""We have successfully integrated all of the traditional RF circuit blocks-synthesizers running greater than 2 Gigahertz (GHz), up conversion mixers, image-reject down conversion mixers, multi-pole filters, amplifiers, and 50 Ohm drivers-into one chip in the same standard ""digital"" CMOS process that we use for all other Broadcom products. With the advent of the BCM3400 family of products, Broadcom is bringing RF CMOS out of the research laboratory and into mainstream consumer devices.""The new tuner family includes a high-performance digital cable tuner design capable of receiving 256-QAM encoded digital cable television. Building on this core technology, Broadcom also has plans to introduce products optimized for the NTSC/PAL analog television markets.Industry Quotations3Com""Integrating the tuner function into a single-chip CMOS process is a significant technological breakthrough for the consumer appliance industry,"" said Levent Gun, Vice President and General Manager of 3Com's Cable and Home Networking Division. ""Broadcom's chip will enable the industry to lower the space requirements and increase the performance standards on next-generation cable modems. This will allow us to economically address the convergence of voice and data on a single system.""Com21""Broadcom's technology innovations continually address the important attributes of reducing cost, size, and power while improving quality and functionality of broadband communications products,"" said John Pickens, Ph.D., Chief Technical Officer of Com21, Inc., a leading cable modem supplier. ""As a Broadcom partner, we welcome these innovations and will continue to work with Broadcom to both evolve the technology and cultivate continued acceptance and market growth by offering cost-effective and high-quality products for the market.""Pace""Cable-TV, set-top box manufacturers will benefit from Broadcom's new tuner chip,"" said Andy Trott, Pace's Technology & Strategic Development Director. ""This device will eliminate a lot of components on the board, resulting in a lower cost solution while maintaining the quality and performance needed for next-generation, digital set-top boxes supporting voice, video and data services.""New Japan Radio Company""Such a highly integrated tuner solution in a digital CMOS process will significantly reduce the cost and improve the reliability of our television and VCR equipment,"" said Mr. S. Orito, General Manager of the New Japan Radio Company. ""Broadcom's tuner is clearly a breakthrough for the industry and will benefit our customers as we begin rolling out new products. With introduction of this tuner family of products, Broadcom will have a significant entry into large analog TV/VCR consumer market.""Funai Corporation""Analog TV/VCR and DVD manufacturers will greatly benefit from Broadcom's new tuner chip,"" said Mr. Osamu Maeda, General Manager of Visual Project for Funai Corporation. ""This device eliminates many components on the board and also eliminates the need for manual adjustment. It significantly improves reliability, resulting in a much lower cost, easier design solution that provides the quality and performance needed for next-generation consumer products.""BCM3400 Product Family InformationThe BCM3400 product family integrates all of the signal processing circuits required to select a requested channel anywhere in the 50 - 860 MHz cable band, amplify it and down convert it to a standard 44 MHz intermediate frequency. The output of this CMOS tuner can be fed into a variety of demodulators for different applications: for example, the Broadcom BCM3300 for cable modem applications and the BCM3120 or the BCM3125 for set-top box applications.The BCM3400 product family employs a triple-conversion architecture tuner that contains an up-conversion mixer driven by a wide band synthesizer, which translates the desired channel up to a fixed first Intermediate Frequency (IF). On-chip channel reduction filters then filter the signal before it is down converted to a second IF. The down conversion mixer is driven by a narrow band synthesizer. More filtering is done at the second IF and then the signal is down converted to an output frequency of 44 MHz. All of the parameters of each chip are controlled by a two-wire serial interface that is MBus compatible.The BCM3400 family integrates all the external Oscillator ""Tank"" components associated with the RF Voltage Control Oscillator (VCO's), which removes the noise from external pins thus simplifying the RF layout, thereby eliminating the need for extensive shielding. ""The performance demonstrated by these integrated VCO's is a world's first in bulk digital CMOS technology,"" stated Dr. Mehrdad Nayebi, General Manager of Broadcom's RF & Mixed-Signal Business Unit.The BCM3415 chip, the first product in the BCM3400 family, is packaged in a 48-pin TQFP and is available priced at $10 in sample quantities.About BroadcomBroadcom Corporation is a leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable broadband digital data transmission of voice, data and video content to and throughout the home and within the business enterprise. Using proprietary technologies and advanced design methodologies, the Company designs, develops and supplies integrated circuits for a number of the most significant broadband communications markets, including the markets for cable set-top boxes, cable modems, high-speed office networks, home networking, direct broadcast satellite and terrestrial digital broadcast, and digital subscriber line (xDSL).

Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, California, and may be contacted at 949 450 8700 or at www.broadcom.com.