News & Events
Intersil CommLink™ Products Enable All Cell Phone Standards

IRVINE, CA, August 1, 2000 — Intersil (NASDAQ: ISIL), a leading systems-oriented provider of circuits and semiconductors for the integrated communications market, announced today that its CommLink™ family of digital radio circuits enables and supports all next-generation wireless standards. The CommLink devices are specifically designed with increased speed capabilities for cellular base station terminal server (BTS) and broadband wireless access applications that support the expanding use of digital radio and wireless Internet applications.

Intersil develops and markets digital radio infrastructure integrated circuits — including digital up- and down-converters and data conversion devices — that are designed to accommodate all current and next-generation protocols, including GSM, IS-136 TDMA, EDGE, IS-95 CDMA, 3G and AMPS. Intersil’s digital radio technology is also designed to address the stringent needs of the smart antenna application within the cellular marketplace, which addresses the frequency capacity limitations that are inherent in current base station cellular technology.

"End users in the cellular market are demanding quality and affordability in the convergence of wireless voice and data services, and Intersil recognizes that meeting these basic demands begins with base station infrastructure" said George Gidzinski, vice president and general manager of Intersil’s Communication ICs business. "The move to 2.5- and third-generation networks has driven Intersil’s digital up- and down-converter development agenda. CommLink provides a complete, cost-effective digital radio solution that can process multiple cellular protocols and can be deployed in next-generation networks. By eliminating the need for protocol-specific hardware, Intersil offers base station designers the flexibility to meet the increasing bandwidth and volume demands of cellular consumers."

In the May 15 report "Wireless Semiconductor Application Markets, 1998 to 2003," Dataquest states that it will be important for suppliers to provide both A/D converters and digital up- and –down converters to be successful in the next wave of new broadband base station technology.

The CommLink ISL5217 up-converter and ISL5216 down-converter are the key components of the Intersil digital radio solution. A critical feature of these devices is the presence of a resampler function that allows the output data rate to be adapted to meet protocol-specific needs on a per-channel basis. The four-channel devices simultaneously support up to four different cellular protocols, which is an important feature for supporting legacy protocols as new cellular standards are deployed.

The report also identifies the need to provide quality wireless service at prices that are competitive with traditional landline service. Semiconductor technology is expected to help achieve this goal by providing higher capacity digital signal processing (DSP) to dynamically allocate frequency capacity when using smart antenna technology.

The Dataquest report forecasts a semiconductor growth rate in cellular and base station equipment of 12.9 percent per year, with semiconductor revenues reaching $4.2 billion by 2003 — nearly double the current market revenue.

"As the worldwide cellular infrastructure marketplace continues to rapidly expand, Intersil is already designed into base station products that will be in a significant portion of all new worldwide cellular infrastructure installations," said Gidzinski. "Intersil takes an aggressive approach to support current and future standards of the global digital radio market. Industry leaders use CommLink devices because they combine superior tuning and filtering capabilities with automatic gain control (AGC) and resampling post-processing functions for all cellular standards. It is further affirmation that the company’s efforts produce results."

About Intersil
Intersil uses its semiconductor expertise to enable highly integrated voice, data and video communications. Intersil's integrated communications portfolio includes PRISM^® Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) chip sets that enable mobile connectivity products for the home and office; analog, mixed-signal and digital integrated circuits for broadband access to wireless and wired Wide Area Networks (WANs); and power management products that enable 24x7 reliability in network servers, next generation PCs and information appliances. For more information about Intersil, visit the company's Internet homepage at www.intersil.com.

CommLink is a trademark of Intersil Corporation.

PRISM is a registered trademark of Intersil Corporation.

This press release contains information relating to certain projections and business trends concerning the worldwide cellular infrastructure marketplace that are forward looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward looking statements are based upon management’s current expectations, estimates, beliefs, assumptions, and projections about our business and industry. Words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "may," "will" and variations of these words or similar expressions are intended to identify forward looking statements. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward looking statements. These forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, our actual results could differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward looking statements as a result of various risk factors. Important risk factors that may cause such material differences for Intersil in connection with the worldwide cellular infrastructure market include, but are not limited to, the rate at which our present and future customers and end-users adopt Intersil’s digital radio integrated circuit technologies and products; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders; the loss of a key customer; the qualification, availability and pricing of competing products and technologies and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products; silicon wafer pricing and the availability of foundry and assembly capacity and raw materials; intellectual property disputes; as well as other risk factors detailed from time to time in Intersil’s filings with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. These forward looking statements are made only as of the date of this press release and Intersil undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward looking statements.