SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 24, 2000 - UMC today announced that Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), the leading developer of integrated circuits enabling broadband communications to and throughout homes and businesses, is utilizing UMC's wafer fabs for the development of its newest product offering. Broadcom is manufacturing its new 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch-on-a Chip, the BCM5680 G-Switch ™, on UMC's 0.25-micron process. The new, single-chip solution delivers non-blocking, wire-speed performance on every port, simultaneously forwarding, routing, and filtering voice, video and data packets at one billion bits per second.

UMC continues to manufacture world-class devices for Broadcom. The IC developer also worked with UMC on the manufacturing of its multilayer, multicapability networking integrated circuit (IC)—the StrataSwitch™ BCM5600—a wire-speed, multi-layer switch that combines switching, routing and traffic classification functionality into a single monolithic IC.

"As the world's first 8-port Gigabit switch-on-a-chip, the BCM5680 is a remarkable device. Given the broad feature set, and the attendant sophistication of the design, it is noteworthy that UMC is achieving cycle times of 23 days with high yields," noted Jim Ballingall vice president of worldwide marketing for UMC. "Our ability to provide Broadcom with world-class manufacturing performance assures them that they will be able to deliver their product to their OEM customers within the critical market windows that characterize the communications market space."

"On a broader level, this is indicative of a industry trend where more of our customer base is increasingly represented by developers and providers of communication, data handling and networking technology," continued Ballingall. "Today, approximately 40 percent of UMC's sales is derived from customers supplying the communications markets. These customers, along with advanced designs in the computing space, have driven our total volume to be dominated by feature sizes at 0.25-micon and below."

"We selected UMC because of their deep experience in leading-edge technology. From the process and design side, they had the best embedded memory capability we evaluated," said Vahid Manian, vice president of manufacturing operations, Broadcom. "Broadcom selected world-class, third-party IP from the UMC Gold IPTM Program to help in designing the BCM5680. Proven technology, advanced manufacturing processes and tireless customer service from UMC contributed immensely to success of this project."

The BCM5680 represents the industry's first 8-port 10/1000/1000BASE-T switch with on-chip packet buffering and multi-layer switching functions. Triple speed (10, 100, and 1000 Mbps) connectivity on every port enables the device to interface to all standard-compliant Ethernet devices, including high-end workstations with Gigabit Ethernet connections and peripheral equipment with 10 Mbps Ethernet connections. The BCM5680 incorporates eight 10/100/1000 Ethernet Media Access Controllers (MACs), data packet memory, and a multi-layer non-blocking switching fabric into a single chip. The MACs are industry compliant with all applicable IEEE Ethernet standards. The data packet memory is configurable to be static and/or dynamically allocated to provide optimal performance.

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