Broadcom adds DVI expertise with Pivotal purchase

Broadcom adds DVI expertise with Pivotal purchase
IRVINE, Calif. — Broadcom Corp. today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Pivotal Technologies Corp. (Pasadena, Calif.), a fabless semiconductor company developing digital visual interface (DVI) solutions.

No financial terms were disclosed. Broadcom will issue approximately 1.94 million shares of its Class B common stock in exchange for all outstanding shares of Pivotal preferred and common stock. At Tuesday's closing price for Broadcom's stock, the deal would be worth about $242 million. The transaction is expected to close shortly and will be accounted for as a pooling of interests.

Pivotal has developed both single- and dual-link DVI transmitters and receivers, as well as proprietary and scalable RF CMOS chips for both wired and wireless environments.

DVI is a broadly-supported display connection standard that will be used between a digital host, such as a PC, set-top box or DVD player, and a display device, such as an HDTV, flat panel display or digital CRT. Dual-ink DVI solutions are essential for higher resolutions like the UXGA and QXGA standards for PCs.

In addition, Pivotal is combining high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) technology with DVI, which allows secure transmission of uncompressed HDTV content from the set-top box to a digital TV. This is a key issue in the entertainment industry for the security and protection of copyrighted video material.

"This is a powerful combination that brings Broadcom's broadband communications expertise together with Pivotal's high-performance expertise in DVI and wireless communications," said Henry T. Nicholas III, president and chief executive officer of Broadcom, based here. "DVI with HDCP is an important addition to our digital set-top box product family. Also, Pivotal's leadership in RF technology, implemented in a low-cost standard logic CMOS manufacturing process, is a great fit with our existing efforts in digital CMOS tuners, Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN standard. Pivotal's expertise in these areas will be important for hitting the cost targets that these applications will require."