Press Releases
Intersil Completes Acquisition of No Wires Needed B.V. — Acquisition Expands Wireless LAN Leadership

— Intersil’s PRISM^® portfolio will now include innovative reference design solutions for wireless-to-broadband home gateways, fixed wireless, and next-generation wireless systems

IRVINE, CA, June 1, 2000 — Intersil (NASDAQ: ISIL), the leading provider of silicon technology for the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) market, announced today that it has completed its acquisition of Bilthoven, Netherlands-based No Wires Needed B.V. in an all-stock transaction.

The acquisition further strengthens Intersil’s leadership in bringing its customers innovative reference designs, advanced silicon and a full range of software and firmware to fuel quick deployment of fast, full-featured wireless systems for homes and offices. NWN’s pioneering work with the IEEE 802.11 global standard is complementary to the continuing drive by Intersil and its many industry-leading customers to support the interoperability of wireless networks and appliances.

"Our strategy is to provide wireless semiconductor and software architectures to support the growing demand for high-speed wireless network connectivity in homes and offices," said Greg Williams, president and CEO of Intersil. "Intersil’s PRISM portfolio enables wireless access to Internet services in homes, offices and public places such as airports, hotels and shopping malls. By acquiring NWN, we expand the portfolio to include many more home and office solutions, all based on the widely-accepted IEEE 802.11 standard."

Williams reports that over 50 systems companies have adopted the PRISM solution, including such powerhouses as Cisco, Siemens, Nokia, Compaq, 3Com, Dell, Samsung and many others. This client list of industry leaders is collectively introducing new products for the home and office virtually non-stop. "These customers – all of whom are selling advanced systems based on the 802.11 standard – will benefit from our wider reference design and silicon portfolio by getting them to market faster with better products." Current production run rates for the popular PRISM II chip set lead Williams to predict: "We’ll ship the 1 millionth PRISM II 11Mbps WLAN chip set in July."

Technological assets from the No Wires Needed acquisition include a very small, innovative, and high performance wireless-to-broadband "access point" reference design that can be easily adapted for home gateway products to wirelessly connect multiple PCs and hand-held or Internet appliances to broadband media. Another area of great value is NWN’s ARM-based medium access control (MAC) technology – the only IEEE802.11b-compliant device in production today. This MAC technology can support up to 54 Megabit-per-second (Mbps) data rates, vital for moving multi-channel voice and digital video around homes and offices; it also sets the stage for Intersil moving quickly into solutions for the 5 Gigahertz (GHz) band.

Adoption of PRISM WLAN Technology
Since introducing the PRISM WLAN chip set in 1996, over fifty companies have incorporated PRISM chips in more than 100 product designs. In a May 2000 report, Cahners In-Stat Group called Intersil "the dominant force in the WLAN chip set marketplace with their PRISM chipsets holding the majority of market share." PRISM technology is designed to comply with the IEEE’s 802.11 global standard, and Intersil is a founding sponsor of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA), whose Wi-Fi™ brand is a mark of compatibility for 802.11-based systems. PRISM chips are used in WLAN systems from industry-leading companies including Nokia, Siemens, Cisco, Compaq, 3Com, Dell, Nortel, Samsung, SpectraLink, Symbol, and Zoom.

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 and mixed-signal 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 http://www.intersil.com.

This press release contains information relating to forecasted results of Intersil, including certain projections and business trends, that are forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to No Wires Needed’s ability to become accretive, on a cash earnings basis, in early 2001 and achieve $50 million annualized run-rate by the fourth quarter of 2001, global and market conditions as well as other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in Intersil's filings with the 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 the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Specific risk factors can be found in Intersil’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

PRISM is a registered trademark of Intersil Corporation.
ARM is a registered trademark of ARM, Ltd.
Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance.