Agere Systems Announces Comprehensive 90 Nanometer Custom Chip Platform Targeted for Communications Applications

Boosts Performance of PCs, Cell Phones, Networking Equipment, and Other Communications Products; Reduces Time to Market by Six Months

JUNE 26, 2002  - ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR.A, AGR.B), the world leader in communications components, today announced a comprehensive 90 nanometer (nm) ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) semiconductor technology platform targeted for communications applications. An ASIC is a microchip designed for specific applications, as opposed to a general purpose microchip such as a microprocessor.

Leveraging Agere's rich portfolio of communications intellectual property (IP), Agere's new AGR90 ASIC Platform can accelerate the pace at which Agere's customers deliver their products to market by approximately six months. Such customers include manufacturers of personal computers, cellular phones, wireless local area networks, networking infrastructure equipment, and other communications products. Using technology one one-thousandth the width of a human hair, Agere's platform can also shrink the size as well as lower silicon costs and power consumption of such equipment. In addition, the technology provides the foundation for substantially increasing wireline and wireless Internet speeds and information carrying capacities of such equipment compared with current semiconductor process technology.

More specifically, Agere's AGR90 ASIC Platform can approximately double the channel density of such products compared with current process technology, thereby nearly doubling overall product performance. The communications-centric platform - a large and diverse collection of design capabilities and IP - can also nearly halve the number of chips needed for such equipment compared with current technology while improving performance, thereby reducing overall silicon costs.

Agere's platform can provide customers with pre-designed, semi-customized, or fully customized solutions, reducing customers' design times and costs. The AGR90 Platform includes various types of standard protocols, serial/deserializer (SerDes) sub-circuits, encoding schemes, digital signal processors, I/O (input/output) cells, microprocessors, memory and more.

"What sets Agere's 90 nanometer offering apart is the company's unmatched, very extensive collection of communications intellectual property that can be easily and quickly accessed and used by customers," said Cindy Genther, marketing director for Agere Systems. "ASIC customers want higher capacity systems at lower costs. Using Agere's AGR90 ASIC Platform customers can get to market much faster."

The AGR90 ASIC Platform contains all the elements a customer needs to rapidly design an ASIC in the 90 nanometer process technology node. This means a customer can integrate multiple SerDes sub-circuit blocks with double data rate (DDR) I/O and standard protocols such as System Packet Interface-4.2. Because these pre-existing functions can be combined with millions of customer logic gates and memory bits in an area array flip chip package, design time can be reduced by approximately six months.

The AGR90 ASIC Platform is based on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation's (TSMC) Nexsys™ 90 nm process for wafer fabrication, to be manufactured at TSMC. Following are a few examples of the AGR90 ASIC Platform benefits:

• Broad portfolio of demonstrated communications IP
• 90 nanometer process technology
• Industry leading SerDes macrocells
• Integrated integrated circuit and package substrate design
• Wide range of high density memories
• Standard and custom I/O portfolio
• State-of-the-art design methodology
• Cost effective, high I/O packaging
• Flexible supply chain management
• Outstanding quality, reliability and support.

Agere's 90 nm SerDes sub-circuit technology is the company's fourth generation 2.5 Gigabits per second (Gbits/s) SerDes. Designed for speeds of 1 Gbits/s to 3.3 Gbit/s, Agere's 90 nanometer SerDes is expected to consume less than 80 milliwatts per channel at 2.5 Gbits/s. The low-power SerDes macrocell is semi-custom and modular, allowing customers to select the ideal number of transmitters and receivers per macrocell for their application. Multiple macrocells can be integrated into an ASIC, allowing total channel counts to exceed 100. The high-speed, high-bandwidth benefits of SerDes technology will also be useful in making high-speed, high-bandwidth applications such as video on demand a reality.

Agere has begun quoting prices to customers in this technology and plans to start designing its 90 nm technology into customers' products in the third quarter of 2002. The company will start production volume manufacturing of 90 nm chips next year.

For more information, customers may call the Agere Systems Customer Response Center, 1-800-372-2447, Dept. A44 (in Canada, 1-800-553-2448), Dept. A44 fax number 1-610-712-4106; call 1-610-712-4323 (especially for callers outside of North America) or email docmaster@agere.com or write to Agere Systems, Room 30L-15P-BA, 555 Union Boulevard, Allentown, Pa. 18109.

About Agere Systems

Agere Systems is the world's leading provider of communications components. The company delivers integrated circuits, optical components and subsystems that access, move and store network information. Agere's integrated solutions form the building blocks for advanced wired, wireless and optical communications networks. The company is a leader in providing integrated Wi-Fi solutions for PC manufacturers, as well as in storage solutions with its read-channel chips, preamplifiers and system-on-a-chip solutions. More information about Agere Systems is available from its Web site at www.agere.com.

Agere's Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements based on information available to Agere as of the date hereof. Agere's actual results could differ materially from the results stated or implied by such forward-looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to customer demand for our products and services, control of costs and expenses, timely completion of employment reductions and other restructuring and consolidation activities, price and product competition, keeping pace with technological change, dependence on new product development, reliance on major customers and suppliers, availability of manufacturing capacity, components and materials, general industry and market conditions and general domestic and international economic conditions including interest rate and currency exchange rate fluctuations. For a further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, see our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2001, and report on Form 10-Q for the period ending March 31, 2002. Agere disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.