Agere Systems, Inc. was an

integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

components company based in

Allentown, Pennsylvania Allentown ( Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Allenschteddel'', ''Allenschtadt'', or ''Ellsdaun'') is a city in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The city has a population of 125,845 as of the 2020 census. It is the fastest-growing major city in Pennsylvania ...

. Spun out of

Lucent Technologies Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business u ...

in 2002, Agere was merged into

LSI Corporation LSI Logic Corporation, an American company founded in Milpitas, California, was a pioneer in the ASIC and EDA industries. It evolved over time to design and sell semiconductors and software that accelerated storage and networking in data center ...

in 2007. LSI was in turn acquired by

Avago Technologies Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

in 2014. In early 2016, Avago acquired the former

Broadcom Corporation Broadcom Corporation is an American fabless semiconductor company that makes products for the wireless and broadband communication industry. It was acquired by Avago Technologies in 2016 and operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of the merged ...

, and took on the name Broadcom Inc. Agere was incorporated on August 1, 2000, as a subsidiary of

and then spun off on June 1, 2002. The name ''Agere'' was that of a Texas-based electronics company that Lucent had acquired in 2000, although the pronunciations of the company names are different. The Texas company was pronounced with three syllables and a hard "g": . The company name was pronounced with two syllables and a hard "g": . Apart from the main office in Allentown, the company also maintained offices and facilities in: *

Reading, Pennsylvania Reading ( ; Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Reddin'') is a city in and the county seat of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city had a population of 95,112 as of the 2020 census and is the fourth-largest city in Pennsylvania after Philade ...

, USA: The "

Reading Works Western Electric's Reading Works in Berks County, Pennsylvania was a manufacturer of integrated circuit and optoelectronic equipment for communication and computing. The work force grew to nearly 5,000 by 1985 making the Reading, Pennsylvania, faci ...

" facility, formerly Lucent/AT&T and

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...

. Closed in 2003. *

Orlando, Florida Orlando () is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and is the county seat of Orange County. In Central Florida, it is the center of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures re ...

, USA: The "Orlando Plant" was Agere's newest wholly owned wafer fabrication facility in the world. Opened in 1984 by AT&T, it was known for a time in the late 1990s as "Cirent Semiconductor" as it was operated as a joint venture between

and Cirrus Logic Corporation. The Orlando Plant was also home to

' Advanced Development and Research Facility (ADRF). Closed in 2005. *

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...

, USA: Agere Optoelectronics South (OES), formerly Hermann Technologies. Acquired 2000, closed 2002. *

Irwindale, California Irwindale is a city in the San Gabriel Valley, in Los Angeles County, California. The population was 1,422 at the 2010 census, down from 1,446 at the 2000 census. The ZIP Codes serving the area are 91010, which is shared with Duarte, 91702, w ...

, USA: Acquired by Emcore Corporation. * Whitefield, India: Located in

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

, involved in

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficie ...

design and software development. *

Raanana Ra'anana ( he, רַעֲנָנָּה, lit. "Fresh") is a city in the southern Sharon Plain of the Central District of Israel. It was founded in 1922 as an American-Jewish settlement, 1 km south of the village of Tabsur, where an important ...

, Israel: This office was based on Modem-Art, a developer of advanced processor technology for 3G/

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the In ...

mobile devices, which Agere acquired in 2005. *

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four Direct-administered municipalities of China, direct-administered municipalities of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the ...

and

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern provi ...

. *

Nieuwegein Nieuwegein () is a municipality and city in the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is bordered on the north by the city of Utrecht, the provincial capital. It is separated from Vianen to the south by the river Lek and borders on IJsselstein in the ...

, Netherlands: This former NCR /

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile ...

division known under the name WCND (Wireless Communication Network Division) was active in the development of

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

technology and closed December 2004. *

Ascot, Berkshire Ascot () is a town in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is south of Windsor, east of Bracknell and west of London. It is most notable as the location of Ascot Racecourse, home of the Royal Ascot meeting, ...

, UK: R&D and engineering site developing processor technology for GSM/GPRS/EDGE. *

Tres Cantos Tres Cantos is a municipality of Spain located in Community of Madrid. Originally belonging to Colmenar Viejo, it seceded from the latter municipality in 1991, becoming the youngest municipality in the region. The urbanised area was conceived as ...

, Madrid, Spain: Wafer fab (). Manufacturing of 0.3, 0.35 and 0.5 micron CMOS devices. Closed in 2001.

Microsoft sued for alleged theft of IP

Microsoft was sued by Agere for theft of key technology used in Internet telephony. The allegations concern meetings between Agere and Microsoft in 2002 and 2003, where the companies discussed selling Agere's

stereophonic Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

acoustic

echo cancellation Echo suppression and echo cancellation are methods used in telephony to improve voice quality by preventing echo from being created or removing it after it is already present. In addition to improving subjective audio quality, echo suppression ...

technology to Microsoft. This technology is used to improve the sound of

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

and teleconference communications over the Internet (i.e., VOIP). Just before the agreement was to be signed, Microsoft ended the discussions saying that it made a significant breakthrough in its own, heretofore undisclosed research program, and no longer needed Agere's technology.

References

External links

LSI Corporation Official Website

Avago Technologies' Official Website
{{AT&T Spinoffs History of Allentown, Pennsylvania Companies based in Allentown, Pennsylvania Technology companies established in 2002 Companies disestablished in 2007 Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States Alcatel-Lucent Fabless semiconductor companies 2002 establishments in Pennsylvania Defunct companies based in Pennsylvania