Conexant to Buy Hotrail

NEWPORT BEACH, CA -- Conexant Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CNXT), announced today that it is acquiring privately held HotRail Inc., of San Jose, Calif. HotRail's high-speed switch fabric and backplane channel technology will enable Conexant to deliver complete system solutions for next-generation Internet infrastructure equipment, including multi-terabit routers, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)/Internet protocol (IP) switches, gigabit Ethernet switches and optical networking equipment.

HotRail pioneered integrated complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) high-speed switching and interconnectivity solutions for the Internet infrastructure and brings important switch fabric technology and innovative multi-gigabit transceivers to Conexant's Network Access Division. Conexant's product portfolio will now span a complete array of networking system components, from physical layer line interfaces to network processors to switch fabrics.

Highly-integrated switch fabrics and high-speed backplane channel transceivers are essential for the demanding performance requirements of multi-terabit routers and optical switches in development today. HotRail's proven backplane channel technology is designed to enable a new breed of networking systems by eliminating data-flow bottlenecks for greatly increased performance.

HotRail will become part of Conexant's Broadband Internetworking Systems (BIS), a newly formed business unit within the company's Network Access Division. BIS focuses on the burgeoning market of semiconductor solutions for the sophisticated information processing required by emerging broadband networking services such as high-speed Internet access, voice over IP, virtual private networks and next-generation wireless voice/data services.

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