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47-494: Broadcom Corporation was an American fabless semiconductor company that made products for the wireless and broadband communication industry. It was acquired by Avago Technologies for $ 37   billion in 2016 and currently operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of the merged entity Broadcom Inc. Founded in 1991 by a professor-student pair Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas from the University of California, Los Angeles ,

94-498: A Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering . He earned a master's degree in 1985, and a PhD. in electrical engineering from UCLA in 1998. His doctoral dissertation became the basis for the development of the integrated circuit (IC) that Broadcom sold. After graduating from UCLA in the 1980s, Nicholas worked at TRW in Redondo Beach, California , where he met Henry Samueli , his future business partner, who

141-415: A "request for information" from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and that it might soon be the subject of an informal inquiry. On July 14, 2006, Broadcom estimated it would have to subtract $ 750 million from earnings due to stock options irregularities. On September 8, 2006, the company announced the amount was at least $ 1.5 billion, "and could be substantially more." On December 18, 2006,

188-852: A history of producing 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 . On September 19, 2011, Broadcom shut down its digital TV operations, along with its Blu-ray chip business. On June 2, 2014, Broadcom announced its intentions to exit the cellular baseband business. Some vendors offer switching equipment based on Broadcom hardware and firmware (e.g. Dell PowerConnect classics) while other well-known vendors use Broadcom hardware with their own firmware. The Broadcom Trident+ ASIC has been used in many high-speed 10Gb + switches from vendors such as Cisco Nexus switches running NX-OS , Dell Force10 (now Dell Networking ) running FTOS / DNOS , all Arista 7050-series switches,

235-445: A history of science fair involvement as a factor for his own success. McGregor was named the foundation's first president and chairman. Fabless manufacturing Prior to the 1980s, the semiconductor industry was vertically integrated . Semiconductor companies owned and operated their own silicon-wafer fabrication facilities and developed their own process technology for manufacturing their chips. These companies also carried out

282-513: A standard CDC Aerospace Computer and was used in the Spy in the Sky Satellites in addition to other classified satellite programs. GIM was reluctant to proceed with the next phase of the program, which it deemed to be too technically challenging. The GIM engineers who had worked on the project were encouraged by CDC to form their own company to provide five new custom circuits. This resulted in

329-475: A string of purchases of companies by Broadcom in the beginning of the 2000s. Unlike the others, which were struggling start-ups, ServerWorks was revenue-generating and profitable. In 2012, Broadcom's total revenue was $ 8.01 billion. As of 2011, Broadcom was among Gartner 's Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by revenue. Broadcom first landed on the Fortune 500 in 2009, and climbed to spot #327 in 2013. In June 2007,

376-459: Is an American businessman who is a co-founder of Broadcom Corporation , and former co-chairman of its board, president, and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. As of August 2024 , Nicholas was ranked number 123 on Forbes billionaire's list with a net worth of $ 16.0 billion. Henry Nicholas was born in Cincinnati, Ohio , to Marcella and Henry T. Nicholas Jr. When Nicholas

423-533: Is known as a fabless company . It outsources all semiconductor manufacturing to foundries , such as GlobalFoundries , Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation , Silterra , TSMC and United Microelectronics Corporation . The company planned a custom-built headquarters campus just south of the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California . It originally intended to occupy

470-670: Is the GPU found on some systems-on-a-chips by Broadcom, the most widely known one being the BCM2835, containing a VideoCore IV found in the Raspberry Pi . The Broadcom Crystal HD is capable of video acceleration. The Broadcom "BCM43" series of chips implements WiFi support for many Android and iPhone devices. Models include the BCM4339 used in phones such as the Nexus 5 (2013) and

517-702: The Betty Ford Center and completed his treatment at Cliffside Malibu . In June 2008, Nicholas and other Broadcom executives were indicted for stock fraud and options backdating. At the same time, Nicholas was also indicted on drug charges. The charges caused considerable scandal, and were the subject of much speculation in the press. Judge Cormac J. Carney threw out the stock fraud and options backdating charges in December 2009. The drug charges were dropped in January 2010. The judge, in dismissing

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564-591: The Bowers Museum in Santa Ana , and Orange County Performing Arts Center . In 1987, Nicholas married Stacey, a former electrical engineer, with whom he had three children. Nicholas is now divorced and separated from his later girlfriends Melissa Montero and Ashley Christine Fargo. He lives in Newport Coast, California. In April 2008, he admitted himself to an alcohol rehabilitation program of

611-871: The IBM /BNT 8264, and the Juniper QFX3500. As of April 2014, 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, as well as a mix of both, on a single chip. Examples of switches using the Trident II XGS chip are the Dell Networking S6000, Cisco Nexus 9000, and some smaller vendors like the EdgeCore AS6700, Penguin Arctica 3200XL, and QuantaMesh T5032. VideoCore

658-673: The Linux kernel source tree for the 802.11b/g/a/n family of wireless chips that Broadcom produces. 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 its source code public. The chipset

705-539: The U.S. International Trade Commission blocked the import of new cell phone models based on particular Qualcomm microchips. They had found that these Qualcomm microchips infringed on patents owned by Broadcom. In January 2017, the FTC sued Qualcomm, who allegedly made use of unlawful tactics to maintain "a monopoly on cellular-communications chips." On April 26, 2009, Broadcom settled its four-year legal battle with Qualcomm over wireless and other patents. The deal also ended

752-723: The BCM4361 used in the Samsung Galaxy S8 (2017). These are system-on-a-chip devices with a Cortex R4 for processing the MAC and MLME layers and a proprietary Broadcom processor for the 802.11 physical layer. The chips are also capable of handling Wi-Fi Direct , Bluetooth , and NFC signals. Broadcom authored its own VoIP codecs in 2002, and released them as open source with the LGPL license in 2009. Such codecs are: Some free and open source drivers are available and included in

799-588: The Henry T. and Stacey Nicholas Foundation, a private nonprofit foundation whose goals were to invest in education, youth sports, technology, medical research, victims' rights and national defense. Following their separation in 2006, it was renamed The Henry T. Nicholas III Foundation. In 2008, the Nicholas Academic Center was opened in downtown Santa Ana, California , in partnership with retired Orange County judge Jack Mandel, on whose program

846-568: The ICs. These parts were given the designation LSI3201, LSI3202, LSI3203, LSI3204 and LSI3205. Another successful space program completed by LSI/CSI was the upgrade to class S of a Standard Brushless DC Motor Commutator/Controller Chip, LS7262, which was implemented in satellites. In 1994, Jodi Shelton , along with a half a dozen CEOs of fabless companies, established the Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA) to promote

893-686: The Raspberry Pi card, a DRM-free motherboard capable of interaction with external hardware. Broadcom Corporation organized the fabrication of the processor chip for the Raspberry Pi, with the last before the company's acquisition in 2016 being the BCM2837 chip and the WiFi processor BCM43438, which was used by the Foundation. Many Broadcom employees have gone on to take key positions in successful tech enterprises and starts ups, including: Broadcom

940-508: The SEC announced charges against Broadcom for fraudulently backdating stock options for nearly five years, from June 1998 to May 2003. In its complaint, the SEC alleged that Broadcom's top officers at the time had misrepresented the dates on which stock options were granted to executives and employees. In describing the scheme, the SEC said: "Through backdating, Broadcom made it appear that the options were granted at times corresponding to low points of

987-412: The SEC opened a formal investigation of Broadcom's options practices. On January 24, 2007, Broadcom announced a restatement of its financial results from 1998 to 2005 to include a total of $ 2.24 billion-worth of expenses related to stock option-based compensation. The grants remained the subject of the formal inquiry by the SEC, and an informal inquiry by federal prosecutors. In between March and May 2008,

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1034-433: The assembly and testing of their own chips. As with most technology-intensive industries, the silicon manufacturing process presents high barriers to entry into the market, especially for small start-up companies. But integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) had excess production capacity. This presented an opportunity for smaller companies, relying on IDMs, to design but not manufacture silicon. These conditions underlay

1081-466: The birth of the fabless business model . Engineers at new companies began designing and selling integrated circuits (ICs) without owning a fabrication plant. Simultaneously, the foundry industry was established by Dr. Morris Chang with the founding of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). Foundries became the cornerstone of the fabless model, providing a non-competitive manufacturing partner for fabless companies. The co-founders of

1128-524: The charges, accused the prosecution of a "shameful" campaign of witness intimidation aimed at securing unjustified convictions. In August 2018, Nicholas was arrested in Las Vegas on suspicion of drug trafficking after a variety of drugs, including marijuana , heroin , cocaine , methamphetamine and ecstasy were found in his hotel suite. In August 2019, he entered an Alford plea to two felony drug-possession charges; he agreed to donate $ 1 million to

1175-555: The closing price of Broadcom's stock — despite the fact that the purported grant date bore no relation to when the grant was actually approved. This resulted in artificially and fraudulently low exercise prices for those options." On May 15, 2008, Broadcom co-founder and CTO Henry Samueli resigned as chairman of the board, and took a leave of absence as Chief Technology Officer. 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

1222-489: The combined company's board, and Dr. Nicholas serves in a strategic advisory role within the new company. The new merged entity was initially named Broadcom Limited but inherits the ticker symbol AVGO. The BRCM ticker symbol was retired. Broadcom's product line spans computer and telecommunication networking products. Examples of such are products for enterprise/metropolitan high-speed networks, as well as products for small office/home office (SOHO) networks. Additionally,

1269-459: The company moved from its Westwood, Los Angeles office to Irvine, California. 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 Corporation acquired ServerWorks Corporation , a maker of chipsets for IA-32 -based servers, in 2001 for $ 957 million. This acquisition was one in

1316-469: The company moved from its Westwood, Los Angeles , office to Irvine, California , in 1995. Broadcom became a public company three years later with a listing on the Nasdaq . The company was known for its aggressive acquisition strategy, which led to significant growth and market share. Broadcom Corporation was founded by professor-student pair Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas from UCLA in 1991. In 1995

1363-427: The company produces transceiver and processor ICs for Ethernet and wireless LANs , cable modems , digital subscriber lines , servers, home networking devices (router, switches, port-concentrators) and cellular phones ( GSM / GPRS / EDGE / W-CDMA / LTE ). It is also known for its series of high-speed encryption co-processors, which serve to offload processor-intensive tasks to a dedicated chip. The company also has

1410-603: The complaints of anti-competitive behavior. As part of the settlement, Qualcomm paid $ 891 million in cash to Broadcom over a four-year period ending June 2013. In March 2006, a report by the Center for Financial Research and Analysis identified Broadcom as one of 17 companies "at risk" for having back-dated stock options grants between 1997 and 2002. On May 18, 2006, amid media reports about options practices, Broadcom said it had started an internal review of its stock options grants. On June 12, 2006, Broadcom announced it had received

1457-544: The course of the year, Broadcom submitted 2,916 changes to the kernel. That 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

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1504-463: The end, the company had to pay $ 160M to settle with the SEC. On 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, 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

1551-941: The entire campus, but after the Avago acquisition, it sold the site to FivePoint Holdings and then leased back only two of the four buildings. Broadcom was previously headquartered in the University Research Park on the University of California, Irvine campus from 2007 on, and before that was headquartered near the Irvine Spectrum . The company 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. Broadcom

1598-780: The fabless business-model globally. In December 2007, the FSA transitioned to the GSA, the Global Semiconductor Alliance . The organizational transition reflected the role FSA had played as a global organization that collaborated with other organizations to co-host international events. The fabless manufacturing model has been further validated by the conversion of major IDMs to a completely fabless model, including (for example) Conexant Systems , Semtech , and most recently, LSI Logic . Today most major IDMs including Apple Inc. , Infineon and Cypress Semiconductor have adopted

1645-463: The first fabless semiconductor company, LSI Computer Systems, Inc. (LSI/CSI) LSI/CSI, worked together at General Instrument Microelectronics (GIM) in the 1960s. In 1969 GIM was hired to develop three full custom CPU circuits for Control Data Corporation (CDC). These CPU ICs operated at 5 MHz (state of the art at the time) and were incorporated in the CDC Computer 469. The Computer 469 became

1692-455: The following: CDC's Aerospace Computer 469 weighed one pound, consumed a total of 10 watts and ran at 5 MHz. CDC ran a parallel program, developing a chipset of eight similar parts that were to operate at 2.5 MHz with the identical environmental and Class S requirements. CDC had initial difficulties with this project, but eventually awarded another contract to LSI/CSI to manage the processing, inspection, visuals, assembly, and testing of

1739-452: The formation of LSI Computer Systems, Inc. (LSI/CSI) in 1969. The new chips were power-efficient random logic circuits with extremely high circuit densities. These new circuits also operated at 5 MHz. These devices were designated LSI0101, LSI0102, LSI0103, LSI0104, and LSI0105 and were manufactured in compact 40-pin metal flat packs with 0.050 inches (1.3 mm) spacing. In creating the fabless semiconductor industry, LSI/CSI had to do

1786-518: 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 . In 2009, the company founded the Broadcom Foundation as a non-profit corporation with a $ 50M investment, at the direction of Henry Samueli , the company's co-founder, and then-Broadcom Chief Executive Scott A. McGregor , who cited

1833-461: The operating system, and which executes independently and prior to loading of the operating system, this claim has not been universally accepted. Broadcom provided a Linux driver for their Broadcom Crystal HD , in addition to hiring Emma Anholt – a former Intel employee – to work on a free and open-source graphics device driver for their VideoCore IV. The charitable Raspberry Pi Foundation requested help from Broadcom for design and manufacture of

1880-674: The practice of outsourcing chip manufacturing as a significant manufacturing strategy. The top 5 sales leaders for fabless companies in 2023 were: The top 5 sales leaders for fabless companies in 2020 were: The top 5 sales leaders for fabless companies in 2019 were: The top 5 sales leaders for fabless companies in 2017 were: The top 5 sales leaders for fabless companies in 2013 were: The top 5 sales leaders for fabless companies in 2011 were: The top 5 sales leaders for fabless companies in 2010 were: The top 5 sales leaders for fabless companies in 2003 were: Henry Nicholas Henry Thompson Nicholas III (born 1959)

1927-476: The scheme, company executives allegedly avoided reporting $ 2.22 billion in compensation expenses. The company also allegedly overstated its income by between 15% and 422%, and understated its loss by between 16% and 38%, according to the SEC. A judge dismissed the charges against company executives Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli, citing witness intimidation on the part of prosecutors. The judge also dismissed charges against chief financial officer William Ruehle. In

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1974-716: The schools are based. The second center opened in 2009 on the campus of Valley High School in Santa Ana. In 2004, Nicholas donated $ 10   million to St. Margaret's Episcopal School in Orange County and for the formation of a partnership with the University of California, Irvine 's Henry Samueli School of Engineering to explore the application of technology to enhance learning. In addition, Nicholas provided St. Margaret scholarships to students from Santa Ana. Nicholas also supports Oakland Military Institute . Nicholas has financially supported South Coast Repertory ,

2021-650: Was a professor of engineering at UCLA. Nicholas later moved to PairGain Technologies in Cerritos , where he was director of microelectronics. He left PairGain in 1991 to start Broadcom Corporation with Samueli. Nicholas and Samueli founded Broadcom in the spare bedroom of Nicholas' Redondo Beach condominium in 1991. Each partner invested $ 5,000 of their own money, and they floated the company in 1998. Nicholas retired from Broadcom in 2003, ostensibly to work on his marriage. In 2003, Nicholas and his wife founded

2068-497: Was also indicted for violations of federal narcotics laws. However, in December 2009, federal judge Cormac J. Carney threw out the options backdating charges against Nicholas and Ruehle because of prosecutorial misconduct , after finding that federal prosecutors improperly tried to prevent three defense witnesses from testifying. In other words, in 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged executives of Broadcom with fraudulently backdating stock options. Through

2115-667: Was four, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother and sister to Los Angeles, California. His mother later married Robert Leach , a journalist and Hollywood screenwriter. Nicholas attended elementary schools in Malibu, and progressed to Santa Monica High School . Nicholas has dyslexia . After attending the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs , Colorado, Nicholas graduated from UCLA School of Engineering in 1982 with

2162-405: Was known for its aggressive acquisition strategy that helped it achieve significant growth and market share, and with quickly entering new markets. 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. The Broadcom logo was designed by Eliot Hochberg, based on

2209-646: Was later adopted by Linksys , which was later purchased by Cisco . Cisco eventually published the source code for its WRT54G wireless broadband router under the GPL license. 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

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