BURNABY, British Columbia, June 14, 2000 (PRIMEZONE) -- PMC-Sierra, Inc. (Nasdaq:PMCS) today announced the acquisition of privately held fabless semiconductor company Malleable Technologies. PMC-Sierra will exchange approximately 1,250,000 shares for the 85% of Malleable Technologies it does not already own. The San Jose-based Malleable team of 40 employees will join PMC-Sierra's rapidly expanding Silicon Valley office. The transaction, subject to completion, will be accounted for as a purchase and is expected to close in the third quarter.
Collaborative Efforts Provide Optimized Voice-Over-Packet Solutions In April 2000, Malleable Technologies announced its MECA(TM) family of Digital Signal processors (DSP) optimized for Voice-Over-Packet processing applications which bridge voice and high speed data networks by compressing voice traffic into ATM or Internet Protocol (IP) packets. The unique MECA architecture is the first to integrate the DSP and packet processing functions in a single chip and replaces over ten DSP devices typically used in current designs. This architecture enables each MECA device to process and packetize up to 96 channels of compressed voice or 512 channels of uncompressed voice enabling an improvement of over 300% in channel density per square inch of board space.
During the past year Malleable, PMC-Sierra and other members of the SATURN(r) Development Group collaborated on the specifications for the MECA products to ensure a seamless integration with PMC-Sierra's VORTEX(tm) chip set and T1/E1 interface solutions. The result is a highly integrated end-to-end silicon solution optimized for next-generation Voice-Over-ATM (VoATM) Gateways, Voice-Over-IP (VoIP) Gateways and Third Generation Wireless equipment (see figures 1 and 2).
"The Malleable team will add savvy digital signal processing-based capabilities to our access product solutions," said Bob Bailey, PMC-Sierra's CEO and chairman. "Our customers require chip set solutions optimized for the multi-service, mixed traffic network equipment. The addition of high density voice DSPs to our line of highly integrated T1/E1, SONET/SDH and ATM or packet traffic management devices offers a complete, interoperable Voice-Over-Packet solution with the highest possible channel densities."
About PMC-Sierra
PMC-Sierra's extensive family of broadband communication semiconductors is enabling the equipment that makes up the backbone of the Internet. The company develops Internet Protocol (IP), ATM, SONET/SDH, T1/E1, and T3/E3 solutions for wide area network and Internet infrastructure equipment. PMC-Sierra's quality system is registered with the Quality Management Institute to the ISO 9001 standard. As co-founder of the SATURN(R) Development Group, PMC-Sierra works with over 30 other member companies to define and develop interoperable, standard-compliant solutions for high speed networking applications.
PMC-Sierra offers worldwide technical and sales support including a network of offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. The company is publicly traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol "PMCS". PMC-Sierra is included in the Nasdaq-100 Index (NDX) which contains the largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The Nasdaq-100 Index is the benchmark for the Nasdaq-100 Index Tracking Stock (AMEX:QQQ). For more information about PMC-Sierra, visit http://www.pmc-sierra.com.
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Attachments
Figure 1: Voice over IP/ATM Gateway Architecture Figure 2: 3G Base Station Controller Architecture
Technical Glossary
AAL1gator(tm) ATM Adaptation Layer 1
ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode
COMET(tm) Combined T1/E1 Framer/Transceiver
COMET-QUAD(tm) Four Channel Combined E1/T1 Transceiver
DSP Digital Signal Processors
IP Internet Protocol
MECA Malleable Embedded Communications Accelerator
QRT 622 Mbit/s ATM Traffic Management Device
QSE 5 Gbit/s ATM Switch Fabric Element
SAR Segmentation and Reassembly
SDH Synchronous Digital Hierarchy - the European
counterpart to SONET
SONET Synchronous Optical NETwork
SPECTRA(tm)-155 SONET/SDH Payload Extractor/Aligner
S/UNI(r)-622-POS 622 Mbit/s ATM and Packet Over SONET
Physical Layer Device
S/UNI(r)-APEX ATM/PACKET Traffic Manager and Switch
S/UNI(r)-ATLAS SATURN( User Network Interface ATM Layer Solution
S/UNI(r)-DUPLEX SATURN( User Network Interface Dual Serial Link,
PHY Multiplexer
S/UNI(r)-QJET SATURN( User Network Interface for J2/E3/T3
S/UNI(r)STAR 155 Mbit/s ATM and Packet-Over-SONET/SDH Physical
Layer Device
S/UNI-VORTEX Octal Serial Link Multiplexer
TEMUX High Density T1/E1 Framer with Integrated VT/TU
Mapper and M13 Multiplexer
VORTEX(tm) A full-featured, highly integrated solution
for ATM or packet-based Digital Subscriber Line
Access Multiplexers (DSLAMs)
(c) Copyright PMC-Sierra, Inc. 2000. All rights reserved. SATURN(r) is a registered trademark of PMC-Sierra, Inc. PMC-Sierra(tm) and VORTEX(tm) are trademarks of PMC-Sierra, Inc.