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Item 1. Business

2021-02-11 compared with 2020-02-05 · 232 added, 236 removed, 163 unchanged (74% of the section changed)

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All other trademarks and trade names appearing in this Form 10-K are the property of their respective owners.

We are a provider of radio frequency, or RF, high-performance analog, and mixed-signal communications systems-on-chip solutions for the connected home, wired and wireless infrastructure, and industrial and multi-market applications.

We are a fabless integrated circuit design company whose products integrate all or substantial portions of a broadband communication system.

In most cases, these products are designed on a single silicon-die, using standard digital CMOS processes and conventional packaging technologies.

We believe this enables our solutions to achieve superior power, performance, and cost advantages relative to our industry competition.

Our customers include electronics distributors, module makers, original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, and original design manufacturers, or ODMs, who incorporate our products in a wide range of electronic devices.

Examples of such end market electronic devices incorporating our products include cable DOCSIS broadband modems and gateways;

wireline connectivity devices for in-home networking applications;

RF transceivers and modems for wireless carrier access and backhaul infrastructure;

We are a provider of communications systems-on-chip (SoC) solutions used in broadband, mobile and wireline infrastructure, data center, and industrial and multi-market applications.

We are a fabless integrated circuit design company whose products integrate all or substantial portions of a high-speed communication system, including radio frequency (RF), high-performance analog, mixed-signal, digital signal processing, security engines, data compression and networking layers, and power management.

In most cases, these products are designed on a single silicon-die using standard digital complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processes and conventional packaging technologies.

We believe this approach enables our solutions to achieve superior power, performance and cost relative to our industry competition.

Our customers include electronics distributors, module makers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs), which incorporate our products in a wide range of electronic devices.

Examples of such devices include cable Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications (DOCSIS), fiber and DSL broadband modems and gateways;

Wi-Fi and wireline routers for home networking;

radio transceivers and modems for 4G/5G base-station and backhaul infrastructure;

fiber-optic modules for data center, metro, and long-haul transport networks;

video set-top boxes and gateways;

hybrid analog and digital televisions, direct broadcast satellite outdoor and indoor units;

and power management and interface products used in these and a range of other markets.

We combine our high-performance RF and mixed-signal semiconductor design skills with our expertise in digital communications systems, software, high-performance analog, and embedded systems to provide highly integrated semiconductor devices and platform-level solutions that are manufactured using a range of semiconductor manufacturing processes, including low-cost complementary metal oxide semiconductor, or CMOS, process technology, Silicon Germanium, Gallium Arsenide, BiCMOS and Indium Phosphide process technologies.

Our ability to design analog and mixed-signal circuits in CMOS allows us to efficiently combine analog and digital signal processing functionality in the same integrated circuit.

As a result, our solutions have high levels of functional integration and performance, small silicon die size, and low power consumption.

We are uniquely positioned to offer customers a combination of proprietary CMOS-based radio system architectures that provide the benefits of superior RF system performance, along with high-performance analog interface and

power management solutions that enable shorter design cycles, significant design flexibility and low system cost across a wide range of broadband communications, wired and wireless infrastructure, and industrial and multi-market applications.

as well as power management and interface products used in these and many other markets.

Our highly integrated semiconductor devices and platform-level solutions are primarily manufactured using low-cost CMOS process technology.

CMOS processes are ideally suited for large digital logic implementations targeting high-volume and low-cost consumer applications.

Importantly, our ability to design analog and mixed-signal circuits in CMOS allows us to efficiently combine analog functionality and complex digital signal processing logic in the same integrated circuit.

As a result, our solutions have exceptional levels of functional integration and performance, low manufacturing cost, and reduced power consumption.

In addition, our proprietary CMOS-based radio and digital system architectures also enable shorter design cycles, significant design flexibility and low system-level cost across a wide range of broadband communications, wired and wireless infrastructure, and industrial and multi-market customer applications.

Industry Background

Over the last two decades, the availability of ubiquitous internet connectivity has resulted in an exponential growth in data content consumption, delivery, and distribution.

The rapid rise of social media, the increasing popularity of broadcast video delivery services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, new high definition multimedia content, and expanding 4G/5G wireless data access have led to an explosion in data traffic and created an insatiable demand for data bandwidth.

Increasingly, industrial, enterprise, and home devices, such as, high-efficiency environmentally friendly or "green" lighting, smart appliances in the connected home, commercial air-conditioning, video surveillance equipment, manufacturing machinery, and point-of-sale asset tracking systems are being connected over the internet, collectively referred to as the Internet of Things, or IoT.

Society's drive towards increased energy efficiency and productivity gains is inextricably linked to an expanding interconnected world of devices and people.

The sheer amount of information generated and made available for further processing in an IoT world necessitates the continuous upgrade of network bandwidth capacity and associated equipment.

Cloud based computing services for storage, big data analytics, and internet data traffic management require massive high-speed data processing and data sharing between servers, switches, and routers within large hyperscale and enterprise data centers.

As a result, the growth in demand for fatter and faster data pipes (higher data capacity and lower data latency networks) inside the home, into the home, and throughout the cloud and wired and wireless communications network infrastructure is unprecedented.

The elimination of data capacity and speed bottlenecks inside networks is heavily reliant on wide spectrum or broadband, high frequency circuits, and digital signal processing algorithms that can improve spectrum utilization efficiency, and can be integrated into cost effective, low power, mixed-signal system-on-chip semiconductor solutions.

We believe that several of these trends are key drivers across multiple of our target markets.

These trends include the following:

Over the last two decades, ubiquitous internet connectivity has driven exponential growth in data content, delivery, distribution, and consumption.

We expect this trend to continue owing to:

• The rapid rise of social media and crowd-sourced real-time content;

• The proliferation of on-demand Over-The-Top (OTT) video services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime;

• Rapid growth in data center and cloud-based services such as Amazon Web Services, Google Search and Apps, and AI/machine learning;

• The “remote economy” accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to work-from-home, and increasing dependence on video conferencing services such as Zoom;

• The proliferation of “Internet of Things” (IoT), including internet-connected appliances within the home, manufacturing industries, and enterprises;

• The advent and growth of broadband 4G/5G wireless mobile internet connectivity.

We expect a strong trend of continuous upgrade of network bandwidth and latency (i.e.

the delay between sender and receiver) in order to keep pace with the exponential growth of network data traffic generated by the above activities.

For example, cloud-based services increasingly require stringent low latency and extremely high-speed network connections between servers and storage within a data center.

Also, IoT devices are generating an increasing amount of internet traffic and require low network latency.

These IoT devices include smart speakers, smart lighting and other smart appliances in the connected home;

commercial air-conditioning;

video surveillance equipment;

manufacturing machinery;

and point-of-sale asset tracking systems.

The reduction of speed and latency bottlenecks throughout networks is heavily reliant on wide spectrum or broadband, high-frequency circuits, and digital signal processing algorithms that can improve spectrum utilization efficiency.

These trends are key drivers across many of our target end-markets:

• Connected Home:

Competing cable, satellite, and other broadband video and data service providers differentiate their services by offering consumers bundled video, voice, and broadband data access.

Many of today’s service provider home gateway set-top boxes enable consumers to simultaneously access and manage multimedia content from multiple locations and screens in the home.

These home gateway or set-top box devices are required to simultaneously receive, demodulate, and decode multiple signals spread across several channels of frequency bandwidth over a wide frequency range.

In traditional set-top box architectures, each simultaneously accessed spectrum of signal is processed by a dedicated RF receiver and transmitter.

In the emerging cable and satellite home gateway or media servers, content is delivered from the gateway/server to “thin” or remote IP clients that do not have traditional TV tuners.

Each of these gateways and clients necessarily includes a broadband RF transceiver SoC based on MoCA, G.hn, or WiFi home data connectivity standards.

As a result, the number of RF transceivers required in each gateway or client is greatly increased.

For example, in order to deliver the increasing data bandwidth requirements of the home, cable MSOs have begun initial deployments of DOCSIS 3.1 equipment and services, which enable channel bonding or the concurrent reception of multiple channels of frequency bands, resulting in a higher aggregate “sum of the channels” bandwidth available to cable subscribers.

With the increasing popularity of accessing multimedia content over-the-top, or OTT, via broadband-enabled streaming services, consumers are augmenting OTT multimedia content services with free over-the-air (OTA) terrestrial TV broadcast programming (also referred to as “Cord Cutting”).

Therefore, cord-cutting OTT streaming media platforms also require one or more terrestrial TV RF receiver and demodulator SoC solutions.

Infrastructure:

The demand for “faster and fatter” data pipes and equipment in enterprise and telecommunications infrastructure markets is being primarily driven by the explosion of data traffic generated by mobile devices, OTT streaming video services, and cloud computing and data analytics.

Inside hyper-scale data centers, high speed optical interconnect products provide the interconnect function between the servers to the top-of-rack switch, which is also connected to the core-router.

Through a hierarchy of switches and routers, servers not only connect to each other horizontally inside the data center, but are also connected to the external transport network.

High speed interconnect products are also present inside the service provider's metro and long-haul high-speed fiber-optic connections of the transport network.

Data center links and equipment are also consistently being upgraded for performance and speed.

Currently, while server connections are transitioning from 1Gbps to 10Gbps links, routers and switches are moving from 10/40Gbps to 100Gbps, and to 400Gbps interconnect speeds.

Likewise, as data traffic demand continues to grow, the number of servers and a server’s capacity to process massive amounts of data is poised to increase dramatically.

Cloud services and machine learning are dependent upon the ability to interconnect vast numbers of servers and storage inside a data center as efficiently as possible, enabling the entire data center to act as a single computing or data processing

For this reason, improving the bandwidth of data center networking technology within and between data centers is critical to the data center technology roadmap.

At the same time, the cooling of these large scale and densely configured data centers requires extremely low power and highly integrated large bandwidth interconnect solutions.

Within wireless access and backhaul infrastructure, the increasing data traffic from 3G/4G/5G wireless access enabled smartphones and IoT devices requires extremely high bandwidth capacity wireless backhaul and fronthaul point-to-point transport links.

As a result, microwave wireless backhaul and fronthaul transport links are migrating to millimeter wave operating frequencies, where a large increase in available spectrum improves data capacity more than tenfold.

The finite, and fractured wireless spectrum designated for 5G access is being used more efficiently by increasing the complexity of radio transceivers to be able to aggregate multiple non-contiguous channels of spectrum.

At the same time, these complex radio transceivers are feeding antenna arrays that can direct wireless signals more efficiently to the target user, vastly improving coverage (range) and maximum data rates.

5G Wireless technology improves data rates and spectral efficiency by deploying antenna arrays consisting of multiple antenna elements and an equivalent large number of radio transceivers per each base-station.

Increasing the density of 5G wireless cells geographically, for capacity and coverage, not only requires more base-stations per unit cell, but it also entails the upgrade of the wireless and optical backhaul transport network connecting the cells.

The rollout of 5G functionality within base-stations presents unprecedented technical challenges in radio transceiver design.

It involves larger bandwidth spectrum handling capability;

extremely high operating radio frequency range;

support of antenna array functionality;

and the ability to transport high speed data to and from the base-station, all the while consuming extremely low power.

In cable infrastructure, in order to deliver extremely high data bandwidth to homes and businesses, conventional copper and analog broadband networks are being upgraded to deploy digital fiber deeper or closer to the subscriber premises.

Currently, the deep optical fiber is being locally terminated at fiber nodes, which “passively” convert the optical signals to electrical signals to be transported over the coaxial cable network that connects to the end subscriber premises.

Coaxial cable networks are not only ubiquitous, but are also extremely expensive to replace with fiber which extends all the way to the subscriber premises.

As a result, service providers are striving to extract greater data bandwidth capacity from their existing coaxial cable networks.

In the cable DOCSIS3.1 network configuration, new fiber node installations are required to support proactive “network monitoring” (“active fiber notes”), continually monitoring and optimizing spectrum usage in the coaxial cable, to deliver up to 10Gbps of available data capacity to any subscriber.

Innovation in radio frequency broadband circuits and signal processing is necessary to meet the cost, power consumption, and size constraints of existing and new fiber node installations.

Increasing bandwidth severely stresses the limits of current semiconductor device technology, and drives up power consumption.

The costly thermal constraints imposed by the additional power dissipation has made it impractical to push more data bandwidth or throughput inside network switches and other interconnects using existing communication signaling techniques.

To surmount these challenges, design innovation in broadband analog circuits, and digital signal processing are required for network systems to reach higher data rates at much lower power consumption per unit bandwidth of data capacity.

Competing cable, fiber and other broadband video and data service providers are offering consumers bundled video, voice, and broadband data access and whole-home internet connectivity.

These home data gateway modems or access devices are required to simultaneously receive, demodulate, and decode multiple signals, which are spread across several channels of frequency bandwidth over a wide frequency range and propagate on coaxial cable, copper, optical fiber or airwaves.

Further, each gateway distributes content throughout the home using a broadband communication transceiver and network processor SoC based on Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) and other wireline home data connectivity standards.

As a result, the number of transceivers required in each home, whether for wireless or broadband wireline access and distribution, is greatly increased.

For example, cable multiple-system operators (MSOs) have ramped up deployments of multi-gigabit DOCSIS 3.1 home equipment and services, which “bond” multiple channels of frequency bands on a coaxial cable, to provide a higher aggregate “sum-of-the-channels” bandwidth to home subscribers.

For example, within the home, Wi-Fi 6 uses wider bandwidth channels and channel-bonding, as well as more sophisticated means of wireless spectrum sharing by users, to provide seamless whole-home coverage.

• Data Center Infrastructure:

Inside hyperscale data centers operated by Amazon, Google and others, high-speed optical transceivers connect racks of servers and storage through a hierarchical network of switches and routers.

Cloud services and machine learning are dependent upon the ability to interconnect vast numbers of servers and storage inside a data center with extremely low latency and highest bandwidth to enable the entire data center to act as a single computing or data processing unit.

Consequently, the data traffic growth inside the data center has significantly outstripped the data traffic flowing to and from the data center.

Currently, while server connections are transitioning from 10Gbps to 25Gbps or 100Gbps links, router and switch connections are moving from 100Gbps to 400Gbps speed interconnections.

The physical limits and challenges of removing the heat dissipated by these optical transceivers and switches are the primary barriers to even higher interconnect speeds.

For all these reasons, improving the bandwidth and power efficiency of data center networking technology within and between data centers remains a critical challenge for the evolution of next-generation data centers.

• 5G Wireless Infrastructure:

Expensive, finite, fractured and non-contiguous 5G wireless spectrum is being utilized more efficiently by aggregating or bonding multiple non-contiguous channels of spectrum with highly complex radio transceivers in a wireless base-station radio unit.

These complex radio transceivers can also be configured in large antenna arrays to direct wireless signals more efficiently to specific users, also known as Massive Multiple-Input Multiple Output beamforming (MMIMO).

Beamforming vastly improves coverage (range), maximizes data rates (bandwidth), and creates

spectral efficiency (data rate per unit spectrum).

Densification, or increasing the number of wireless base-stations per unit area, also improves network capacity and coverage.

In turn, the wireless and optical backhaul transport networks required to connect the higher number of base-station cells must have greater data capacity.

As a result, microwave wireless backhaul and fronthaul transport links are migrating to millimeter wave operating frequencies where the availability of spectrum improves data capacity by more than tenfold.

Implementing 5G access and transport functionality within base-stations requires radio transceivers that can process larger radio spectrum bandwidths;

have expanded radio frequency range;

compensate for signal distortion from high-power amplifiers;

support beamforming in large antenna arrays;

and have the ability to transport high speed data to and from the network, all in a low-cost, power-efficient design.

• Industrial & Multi-Market:

We have proven technical competency serving the connected world.

Increasingly, in the industrial world, manufacturing equipment and appliances are connected to each other and to the cloud to better optimize utilization, improve power consumption, and plant management.

Legacy equipment and new installations need to communicate with each other via newer and older connectivity protocol standards.

This in turn creates opportunities for the growth of interface products, and interface bridge products supporting multiple protocols.

We believe our interface product portfolio, which consists of serial interface, universal serial bus (USB), universal asynchronous receiver transmitter (UARTS), peripheral interconnect express (PCIe) devices, data converters, power management integrated chips (PMICs), and force touch sensing modules, creates new growth vectors across communications, industrial and multiple other end markets.

The development of broadband, low power, integrated communication systems-on-chip solutions is at the heart of competitiveness across a range of different businesses spanning broadband wireline access, mobile data services, hyperscale cloud data centers providing search, social networking and OTT streaming services, and cloud computation and storage markets.

The proliferation of high frequency, high bandwidth, low power applications with advanced features has led to a rapid increase in the demand for systems that require multiple radio-frequency, mixed-signal, and high-performance analog and digital signal processing transceiver SoCs.

This, in turn creates growth opportunities for interface products, and interface bridge products supporting multiple protocols.

We believe our interface product portfolio, which consists of serial interface, universal serial bus (USB), universal asynchronous receiver transmitter (UARTS), peripheral interconnect express (PCIe) devices, data converters and power management integrated chips (PMICs), addresses a broad and growing servable market across communications, industrial and multiple other end markets.

Additionally, the proliferation of increasingly complex high frequency, high bandwidth and low-power applications has led to a rapid increase in the demand for systems that require multiple radio frequency, mixed-signal, and high-performance analog and digital signal processing transceiver SoCs.

Challenges Faced by Providers of Systems and RF Transceivers and Optical Interconnects

The performance requirements of high bandwidth spectrum-efficient applications consisting of broadband data access and connectivity at home, 4G/5G wireless access and backhaul communications network infrastructure, and high-speed optical interconnect applications in data center, metro, and long-haul telecom transport are extremely stringent.

In particular, designing and implementing high-frequency, high-bandwidth RF transceiver systems is extremely challenging owing to the high operating frequency ranges and the spectrally scattered wide frequency bands across which the communication signal is transmitted.

As a result, system designers encounter significantly more sources of interference than in the case of traditional narrow band, low-frequency communication systems.

Traditional implementation of narrow band single-channel RF transceivers entails conventional radio system architectures that requires expensive discrete components, and are fabricated in costly special purpose semiconductor technologies, such as silicon germanium, gallium arsenide, and RF enhanced CMOS process technologies.

Designing and implementing high-frequency, high-bandwidth RF transceiver systems is extremely challenging owing to the high operating frequency ranges and wide frequency bands across which the communication signal is transmitted.

As a result, system designers must contend with significantly more sources of interference and signal impairments than in the case of traditional narrow band, low-frequency communication systems.

These narrow band single-channel RF transceivers often use conventional radio system architectures that require expensive discrete components, and are fabricated in costly special-purpose semiconductor technologies, such as silicon germanium, gallium arsenide, and RF enhanced CMOS process technologies.

The key challenges of capturing and processing high quality broadband communications signals include:

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Many of the advanced high-data-rate applications require the simultaneous RF reception of multiple channels or frequency bands in order to first aggregate, and then subsequently demodulate, the data signal, which is spread over discrete disparate frequency bands.

Likewise, high data rate transmission is achieved by disaggregating the user's data signal and transmitting it over multiple available frequency bands spanning a wide frequency spectrum.

For example, in the cable set-top box and broadband gateway markets, it is necessary to support the simultaneous reception of multiple channels of high definition video, voice, and data applications in many system designs.

OEMs meet these stringent requirements via multiple narrow or wideband RF receivers, each of which is dedicated to the reception of a single frequency band.

Likewise, data transmission is achieved by disaggregating the user's data signal and transmitting it over multiple available frequency bands spanning a wide frequency spectrum.

For example, in the cable modem and broadband gateway markets, it is necessary to support the simultaneous reception of multiple channels of high-definition video, voice, and data applications in many system designs.

OEMs meet these stringent requirements via multiple narrow- or wide-band RF receivers, each of which is dedicated to the reception of a single frequency band.

An alternate, but highly challenging, approach involves Full Spectrum Capture (FSC TM ) receiver SoCs, which can receive and digitize the entire available RF frequency spectrum in the transmission medium.

They can then select and aggregate the relevant frequency bands over which the data is spread using analog and mixed-signal digital co-processing techniques.

In conventional architectures, use of discrete multiple RF receivers is costly or unviable due to increased design complexity, overall cost, circuit board space, power consumption and heat dissipation.

In addition, such implementations suffer from signal integrity issues, reliability, signal interference, and thermal challenges owing to the proximity of sensitive multiple RF receivers and discrete components in a limited PCB footprint.

In contrast, use of multiple discrete conventional narrowband RF receivers is impractical due to increased design complexity, overall cost, circuit board space, power consumption and heat dissipation limitations.

In addition, such narrowband receiver implementations suffer from signal integrity issues, reliability, and thermal challenges owing to the proximity of sensitive multiple RF receivers and discrete components in a limited PCB footprint.

• Signal Clarity Performance Requirements:

In communications systems, performance is limited by the quality of the received/transmitted signal, which is referred to as the signal-to-noise ratio or dynamic range of the transceiver.

The signal-to-noise ratio measures the strength of the desired signal relative to the total noise and undesired signal energy in the same channel.

High definition satellite and terrestrial digital video, high capacity 5G wireless cellular data networks operating across non-contiguous wireless spectrum bands, and wired coaxial cable and power-line networks require broadband RF transceivers with large dynamic range.

These transceiver systems are required to isolate the desired signals from the undesired signals, which are invariably present in the wide operating frequency range.

The undesired signals not only include the noise generated by extraneous radio waves, but also interference produced by home appliances, enterprise communications equipment, and other wireless networking systems.

For example, in broadband television reception, traditional RF transceiver implementations utilize expensive discrete components, such as band-pass filters, resonance elements, and varactor diodes to separate the desired signals from the interfering signals.

In high speed mobile environments, diversity combining of radio signals and multi-user MIMO, in which the desired signal is spread over multiple frequency bands, is achieved using multiple RF transceivers.

Analog and digital signal processing is employed to reconstruct the original signal and to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

While diversity combining of radio signals significantly improves signal-to-noise ratio, it requires sophisticated RF, analog and digital signal co-processing, and software expertise.

Broadband reception and diversity combining of RF signals in mobile environments are extremely difficult to implement due to the stringent size, cost, and power consumption constraints.

Also, higher order modulation of communication signals, which enables maximization of data capacity in a finite spectrum, requires extremely high signal-to-noise or dynamic range, which greatly increases the difficulty of implementing broadband systems.

In communications systems, performance is limited by the quality of the received/transmitted signal that can be supported throughout the channel bandwidth.

Signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio measures the strength of the desired signal relative to the sum of the noise and undesired signal energy in the same channel.

High capacity 5G wireless cellular data networks operate across non-contiguous wireless spectrum bands, while wired coaxial cable and power-line networks require broadband RF transceivers supporting high SNR.

Optical transceivers operate across the widest bandwidths available and must preserve the necessary SNR throughout their bandwidth.

These transceiver systems must isolate the desired signals from the undesired signals that are invariably present in their wide operating frequency range.

The undesired

signals not only include the noise generated by the natural environment, but also interference produced by home appliances, enterprise communications equipment, and other wireless networking systems.

For example, in 5G mobile infrastructure applications, a radio transceiver receiving a channel at 1710MHz must cope with reflections in the environment as well as interference from a neighboring channel at 1660MHz picked up by the receiving antenna.

The transceiver must also compensate for distortion introduced by the strong signals out of the transmitting antenna.

Analog and digital signal processing is employed to improve SNR in the received and transmitted signals.

Beamforming and MIMO of radio signals also significantly improves signal-to-noise ratio, but requires sophisticated RF, analog and digital signal co-processing, and software expertise.

Broadband reception and beamforming of RF signals in mobile environments are extremely difficult to implement due to the stringent size, cost, and power consumption constraints.

Also, higher order modulation of communication signals requires extremely high SNR to maximize data capacity in a finite spectrum, which greatly increases the difficulty of implementing broadband systems.

• Power Consumption:

Power consumption is an important consideration in consumer, broadband operator, and wired and wireless infrastructure applications.

For example, in battery-operated devices such as notebooks, and voice-enabled cable modems with backup battery requirements to support E911 services, long battery life is a differentiating device attribute.

In wireless infrastructure applications, the cost of provisioning power to base-

station antenna towers and the operating cost attributable to energy consumption is extremely high.

In wired optical infrastructure, such as data centers, the cost and technical challenges of cooling larger scale, densely configured data centers are quite significant.

In many multiple transceiver system designs, a majority of the system’s overall power consumption can be ascribed to RF transceiver and related components.

Providers of RF transceivers and RF transceiver digital signal processing SoCs are confronted with the design challenge of lowering power consumption while improving the device performance.

Power consumption has become a major concern inside communication systems, including home access gateways, wireless base-stations and data center infrastructure applications.

For example, inside the home, Wi-Fi capacity and bandwidth improvement require increasing the number of transceivers per access point with greater channel bandwidths.

As a result, the home Wi-Fi gateway has significant heat dissipation challenges within the system due to the increase in power consumption.

Likewise, within the data center, physical limitations in the ability to remove heat efficiently from network switches, and the optical transceivers plugged into them, are the main obstacles to increasing data center network bandwidth at and beyond 400Gbps speed per optical transceiver.

These switches and transceivers now consume an increasingly significant fraction of total data center power.

In 5G wireless access infrastructure applications, the cost of provisioning power to base-station antenna towers and the operating cost attributable to energy consumption is high.

In many multiple-transceiver system designs, a majority of the system’s overall power consumption can be ascribed to radio transceivers.

The size of electronic components, such as RF transceivers and digital signal processing SoCs, is a key consideration for system designers and the service providers that deploy them.

Given the proliferation of the number of RF transceivers in broadband applications such as service provider video and data gateway markets, size is a determining factor in the selection of a silicon vendor’s component.

In wired optical infrastructure applications inside data centers, rapidly increasing network server and switch face-plate density trends are aggressively driving reduction of the size of interconnects.

In wireless infrastructure, space on the base-station radio towers, where the radios and modems are mounted, is highly constrained and is extremely expensive to procure.

In 5G wireless access, the deployment of massive MIMO and antenna arrays and cell densification for coverage and capacity greatly increase the number of radio transceivers required in each base-station radio tower, as well as the number of base-stations in a cell.

There are also challenges that are specific to the processing of high-speed optical interconnect signals in our target data center, metro and long-haul telecommunications transport markets.

In 5G wireless infrastructure, space on the base-station radio towers where the radios and modems are mounted, is highly constrained and is a significant portion of operating costs.

The deployment of massive MIMO and antenna arrays, and cell densification for 5G wireless coverage and capacity, greatly increase the number of radio transceivers required in each base station radio tower and the number of base stations in a cell.

As a result, there is a growing trend and an increasing need for highly complex integrated SoCs with greater numbers of transceivers per SoC.

There are also challenges that are specific to the processing of high-speed optical interconnect signals in our target data center markets.

◦ Optical Fiber Channel Impairments:

The optical properties of the fiber material result in impairments to the optical signal as it propagates along the fiber.

These impairments include not only the loss of light intensity, but also the adverse modal, chromatic, and polarization dispersion effects on light during its propagation in the fiber.

These impairments degrade signal integrity, which not only reduces the maximum data throughput, but also limits the distance over which data can propagate over passive fiber.

Further, electrical signal impairments are introduced in the process of conversion of optical signals to electrical signals.

Therefore, RF transceivers and PHY SoCs present inside optical modules are required to correct both electrical and optical signal impairments at both ends of the fiber termination.

Optical Device Technology .

The state of the art in optical device technology today lags the rapidly increasing speed requirements of data traffic within cloud data centers and optical transport links between telecom data centers.

So, there are severe physical limits to the conversion of electrical signals to optical signals and vice versa at extremely high speeds.

These limitations arise from bandwidth, nonlinearities, and noise properties in lasers, modulators, and photo detectors used in optical modules.

The form factor of the face plates in server, storage, switch, and networking racks in data centers limits the amount of heat that can be dissipated within an enclosure.

The power consumption of electrical and optical devices inside the transceivers, to which optical fibers are connected, has been dramatically increasing.

This imposes severe and costly thermal design challenges in the development of systems.

As data rates have increased dramatically, the physical form of the face plates and connectors incorporating optical devices have not scaled rapidly enough to accommodate the corresponding increase in power density.

Our RF and Mixed-Signal Platform Solutions

We are a provider of radio-frequency, or RF, high performance analog, and mixed-signal communications systems-on-chip solutions for the connected home, wired and wireless infrastructure, and industrial and multi-market applications.

We are a fabless integrated circuit design company whose products integrate all or substantial portions of a broadband communication system.

In most cases, these products are designed on a single silicon-die, using standard digital CMOS processes and conventional packaging technologies.

This enables our solutions to achieve superior power, performance, and cost advantages relative to our industry competition.

Our customers include electronics distributors, module makers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and original design manufacturers (ODMs), who incorporate the Company’s products in a wide range of electronic devices.

Examples of such end market electronic devices incorporating our products include cable DOCSIS broadband modems and gateways;

wireline connectivity devices for in-home networking applications;

RF transceivers and modems for wireless carrier access and backhaul infrastructure;

fiber-optic modules for data center, metro, and long-haul transport networks;

video set-top boxes and gateways;

hybrid analog and digital televisions, direct broadcast satellite outdoor and indoor units;

and power management and interface products used in these and a range of other markets.

The inherent optical properties of the fiber material result in impairments to the optical signal as it propagates along the fiber.

These impairments degrade signal integrity due to the loss of light intensity and other adverse modal, chromatic and polarization dispersion effects on the propagating light.

Further, electrical signal impairments are introduced in the process of conversion of optical signals to electrical signals, which together reduce the maximum data throughput and limit the distance over which data can propagate over fiber.

Therefore, communications SoCs present inside optical modules (often referred to as digital signal processors or DSPs) are required to correct both electrical and optical signal impairments at both ends of the fiber termination.

◦ Photonics Device Technology:

Today’s state-of-the art in photonic device technology lags the rapidly increasing speed requirements of data traffic within cloud data centers and optical transport links between telecom data centers.

This imposes severe limits to the high-speed conversion of electrical signals to optical signals, and vice versa, owing to the bandwidth limitations, nonlinearities, and noise properties in lasers, modulators, and photo detectors used in optical modules.

◦ Form Factor:

Optical transceivers are required to conform to multi-source agreement (MSA) standardized form factors, which in turn determine the number of transceiver ports that can fit in the face plates of standard server, storage, and switch rack units.

Standardization of transceiver form factors and rack unit face plates allows data center operators to upgrade network speeds of existing installations by simply replacing older optical transceivers and switches with newer faster ones, rather than having to overhaul installed fiber infrastructure and floorplan.

The dimensions of the standard face plate impose a severe constraint on the amount of heat that can be practically removed from a rack unit.

A major challenge facing optical transceiver SoCs is to support exponentially growing data rates within the standardized form factor and thermal constraints.

Our RF, Mixed-Signal and Digital SoC Platform Solutions

We are a provider of communications systems-on-chip solutions for the connected home, mobile and wireline infrastructure, data centers, and industrial and multi-market applications.

Our products exemplify our core integrated circuit design and communications systems engineering capabilities:

• Proprietary broadband/RF, analog and mixed-signal transceiver front ends:

Our analog and mixed-signal IC designers implement complex broadband radio transceiver front ends in standard silicon CMOS processes.

Our ability to integrate complex RF/Analog and mixed-signal circuits in standard CMOS processes enables single-die integration of a complete digital signal processing communication system.

Our analog and mixed-signal IC designers implement complex broadband radio transceiver front-ends and data converters in standard silicon CMOS processes, which enables single-die integration of a complete digital signal processing communication system.

This results in state-of-the-art performance, highest energy efficiency or lowest power, smallest form factor, and the lowest manufacturing cost of a target function.

Our high performance mixed-signal design capability, which involves the high-speed conversion of signals precisely and efficiently between analog and digital domains, is core to all our products and market applications.

Our mixed-signal capabilities have allowed us to design Full Spectrum Capture™ (FSC) receivers which digitize wide swaths of frequency spectrum.

For example, in cable DOCSIS3.1 data gateways, our single-chip FSC receivers digitize the entire cable spectrum and aggregate multiple frequency bands or channels using analog and digital signal co-processing to enable multi-gigabit data services.

Our architectural and circuit innovations have resulted in a 100-fold reduction in power per unit bandwidth in broadband DOCSIS cable modems, while increasing the total data throughput by an even greater factor.

In our latest products, which address the emerging 400Gbps high speed optical interconnect applications inside the data center, our transceivers digitize and aggregate 4 lanes of 100Gps of high-speed data signals coming across the fiber, delivering 400Gbps of data throughput.

Our microwave backhaul RF transceiver constitutes the industry’s first single-chip CMOS implementation.

It not only has the capability to receive signals spanning an extremely wide 5GHz to 45GHz frequency range, but it is also able to aggregate signals spread over multiple disparate frequency bands to support multi-gigabit-per-second data speeds.

As a result, wireless backhaul outdoor units incorporating our solution have the lowest power consumption, smallest form factor, superior performance, and the lowest system cost of any wireless backhaul outdoor unit of which we are aware.

For example, in cable DOCSIS3.1 data gateways, our single-chip Full Spectrum Capture (FSC) receivers digitize the entire cable spectrum and aggregate multiple frequency bands or channels using analog and digital signal co-processing to enable multi-gigabit data services.

There is a 100-fold reduction in power per unit bandwidth while increasing the total data throughput by an even greater factor.

Our high-performance mixed-signal design capability, which involves the high-speed conversion of signals precisely and efficiently between analog and digital domains, is core to all our products and market applications, including high-speed optical interconnect applications inside data centers, 5G Access infrastructure MMIMO radios, and millimeter wave and microwave wireless backhaul transport.

• Advanced digital signal processing ASIC design and algorithms:

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Communication systems across a range of our current and future target markets share common signal processing functions, such as efficient error control coding, compensation for transmission medium or channel induced impairments, and digital processing of wideband signals.

So, algorithmic breakthroughs in one application are directly applicable to other product areas.

Architecture and system design for highly-integrated end-to-end communication systems on a single-chip.

As such, algorithmic breakthroughs in one application are directly applicable to other product areas.

• Embedded systems and software architecture:

Our products contain complex integrated CPU subsystems.

These subsystems typically include multiple low-power microprocessor cores, packet processor, bus and peripherals, memory controllers, and interrupt processing.

In addition to signal processing and supervisory activity functions, we also implement multiple layers of real-time embedded firmware and protocol stacks on a single chip.

We believe our expertise and track record of successfully developing widely deployed, reliable embedded protocols for networking applications are essential to the evolution of connected home products of the future.

Our firmware design capability is critical to the ease of use of our products in end customer platforms.

• Architecture and system design for highly integrated end-to-end communication platform solutions:

Our novel design techniques tradeoff individual signal path circuit level performance to optimize the overall system performance.

Our holistic system level design approach eliminates costly, and power-hungry overdesign of individual circuit elements in the signal path.

As a result, we are able to address more complex customer problems that require a deeper understanding of the customer’s end product.

Many of our products not only integrate the entire physical layer (PHY), but also implement complete protocol stacks.

Examples of these products include our fully integrated single-chip solutions for in-home wireline connectivity, namely G.hn and MoCA solutions.

The integration of entire systems on a single-chip reduces the number of external board-level components, decreases board space, improves performance, simplifies customers’ product design, and significantly reduces power consumption.

Our holistic platform and system level design approach eliminates costly, and power-hungry overdesign of individual circuit elements.

It allows us to address more complex customer problems that require a deeper understanding of the customer’s end product.

Our products not only integrate the entire physical layer (PHY), but also implement complete protocol stacks along with ready-for-use product level interface functionality and associated platform software.

We also provide the most efficient and cost-effective platform level power management IC solutions that regulate and monitor the power consumption for our chips and other circuits on the platform.

The integration of the entire system on a single-chip or utilizing minimal number of silicon dies reduces the number of external board-level components, decreases board space, improves performance, simplifies customers’ product design, and significantly reduces power consumption.

• Low-power design methodology:

Reduced power consumption is extremely important to our end products and markets.

The superior energy efficiency of our products reflects our years of cumulative experience and R&D investment in system architecture, semiconductor device modeling, and integrated circuit design expertise.

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This in turn improves end customer product reliability, increases the density of product features that can be supported in a compact footprint, and reduces overall system cost.

Embedded systems architecture.

Our products contain complex integrated CPU subsystems.

These subsystems typically include multiple low-power microprocessor cores, bus and peripherals, memory controllers, and interrupt processing.

In addition to signal processing and supervisory activity functions, we also implement multiple layers of real-time embedded firmware and protocol stacks on a single-chip.

Our firmware design capability is critical to the ease of use of our products in end customer platforms.

• Scalable Platform:

Our products share a highly modular, core radio system and digital signal processing architecture, which enables us to offer fully integrated broadband RF transceiver based digital communication SoC solutions.

They meet the stringent performance requirements of a wide variety of end market applications and standards.

Our products share common, modular components such as data converters, radio architectures, signal processing algorithms, and digital signal processing circuit architectures, which enables us to offer fully integrated broadband RF transceiver based digital communication SoC solutions across a wide variety of markets while meeting the stringent performance requirements of these end market applications and standards.

This contrasts to legacy solutions that require significant customization to conform to the various regional standards, technical performance and product feature requirements.

As a result, our customers can minimize their design resources required to develop applications for multiple target markets using our platform solutions.

In addition, we can deploy our engineering resources more efficiently to both diversify and address larger communications end markets.

Our objective is to be the leading provider of highly integrated mixed-signal RF transceivers and SoCs for the connected home, wired and wireless infrastructure, and industrial and multi-market applications.

In the future, we aim to leverage our core analog and digital signal co-processing competency to expand into other communications markets with similar performance requirements.

In addition, we are able to deploy our engineering resources more efficiently to both diversify and address larger communications end markets.

Our objective is to be the leading provider of communications SoCs for the connected home, wired and wireless infrastructure, and industrial and multi-market applications.

We aim to continue to leverage our core analog and digital signal co-processing competencies to expand into other communications markets with similar performance requirements.

The key elements of our strategy are:

Extend Technology Leadership in RF Transceivers and RF Transceiver + Digital Signal Processing SoCs.

We believe that our success thus far is largely attributable to our RF and mixed-signal design capability, as well as advanced digital design expertise.

• Extend Technology Leadership in RF Transceivers and RF Transceiver + Digital Signal Processing + Embedded Processor SoCs:

We believe that our success thus far is largely attributable to a combination of our RF and mixed-signal design capability together with advanced digital design expertise.

We have leveraged this core competency to develop high-performance, low-cost semiconductor solutions for broadband communications applications spanning the connected home, wireless access and backhaul network infrastructure, and high-speed fiber-optic modules for data center, metro, and long-haul infrastructure markets.

The broadband market presents significant opportunities for innovation through the further integration of RF and mixed-signal functionality with digital signal processing capability in CMOS process technology.

By doing so, we believe we will be able to deliver products with lower power consumption, superior performance, and increased cost benefits to system designers and service providers.

We believe that our core competencies and design expertise in this market will enable us to acquire more customers and design wins over time.

We will continue to invest in this capability and strive to be an innovation leader in this market.

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We are committed to recruiting and retaining highly talented personnel with proven expertise in the design, development, marketing and sales of communications integrated circuits.

We believe that we have assembled a high-quality team in all the areas of expertise required at an integrated circuit design

We believe that we have assembled a high-quality team in all the areas of expertise required at an integrated circuit design and communications systems company.

We provide an attractive work environment for all of our employees.

We believe that our ability to attract the best engineers is a critical component of our future growth and success in our chosen markets.

Our products are integrated into a wide range of electronic devices, including cable, terrestrial, and satellite video set-top boxes and gateways, cable DOCSIS data and voice gateways, hybrid analog and digital televisions, direct broadcast satellite outdoor units, optical modules for data center, metro, and long-haul transport network applications, RF transceivers and modem solutions for wireless carrier infrastructure applications, wireline connectivity devices for in-home networking applications and last-mile broadband access, and power management and interface products for enterprise networking, infrastructure, industrial, and multi-market applications.

We provide our customers with guidelines, known as reference designs, so that they can efficiently use our products in their product designs.

We currently provide the following types of semiconductors:

RF Receivers.

These semiconductor products combine RF receiver technology that traditionally required multiple external discrete components, such as very high frequency, or VHF, and ultra-high frequency, or UHF, tracking filters, surface acoustic wave, or SAW, filters, intermediate-frequency, or IF, amplifiers, low noise amplifiers and transformers.

All of these external components have been either eliminated or integrated into a single semiconductor produced entirely in standard CMOS process technology.

RF Receiver SoCs.

These semiconductor products combine the functionality of RF receivers, and demodulators in a single chip.

In some configurations, these products may incorporate multiple RF receivers and single or multiple demodulators in a single chip to provide application or market specific solutions to customers.

Wireless Infrastructure Backhaul RF Receivers and Modem SoC's.

These semiconductor products reside in wireless operator system deployments to enable communication between various metro network rings.

The RF receiver is capable of receiving and transmitting signals spanning 5-45 GHz and passes the signal to the back-end modem device, which modulates one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information for transmission and demodulate signals to decode the transmitted information.

The increasing amounts of data and video content being consumed on mobile devices are creating new opportunities for innovative and efficient modem and RF receiver SoCs.

Laser Modulator Drivers.

These semiconductor products reside in optical modules and provide a constant current source that delivers exactly the current to the laser diode that it needs to operate for a particular application

Transimpedance Amplifiers.

These semiconductor products reside in optical modules and provide current-to-voltage conversion, converting the low-level current of a sensor to a voltage.

Clock and Data Recovery Circuits.

These semiconductor products generate a clock from an approximate frequency reference, and then phase-aligns to the transitions in the data stream with a phase-locked loop, or PLL.

Interface solutions.

These differentiated bridging connectivity products include USB, ethernet, PCIe, as well as UARTs, and serial transceiver devices which serve data and telecommunications, networking and storage, industrial control and embedded applications and facilitate and optimize the interface between systems and across networks.

Power Management.

These DC/DC voltage conversion and supervision products are designed to support the needs of various infrastructure, broadband, industrial and embedded system applications, including traditional linear, switching power management solutions and universal PMICs.

Our proprietary and patented programmable power technology enables customers to reduce product development cycles, provides a flexible and configurable solution for control of critical attributes of the power management system and enables the system architect to design products that significantly reduce wasted energy.

Data encryption and compression .

These products offer some of the industry's lowest noise and distortion amplifiers and lowest power consumption high speed analog-to-digital converters, or ADCs.

They include instrumentation, low noise, high speed and hybrid amplifiers, as well as high speed ADCs and digital-to-analog converters.

Our amplifier and data converter products are designed to meet the needs of various industrial, medical, and video applications.

We sell our products, directly and indirectly, to original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, module makers and original design manufacturers, or ODMs, and we refer to these as our end customers.

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In the years ended December 31, 2020, 2019 and 2018, ten customers accounted for approximately 68%, 63% and 61% of our net revenue, respectively.

In the years ended December 31, 2019 , 2018 and 2017 , one of our direct customers, CommScope Holding Company, Inc., or Commscope, represented 14% , 18% and 25% , respectively, of our net revenue.

In the year ended December 31, 2020, two of our direct customers represented 28% of our net revenue.

years ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, one of our direct customers, CommScope Holding Company, Inc., or Commscope, represented 14% and 18%, respectively, of our net revenue.

Products shipped to Asia accounted for 82%, 84% and 81% of our net revenue in the years ended December 31, 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively.

Products shipped to Hong Kong accounted for 42%, 46%, and 43% of our net revenue in the years ended December 31, 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively.

Products shipped to China accounted for 17%, 14% and 19% of our net revenue in the years ended December 31, 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively.

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We sell our products worldwide through multiple channels, using our direct sales force, third party sales representatives, and a network of domestic and international distributors.

We have direct sales personnel covering the United States, Europe and Asia, and operate customer engineering support offices in Carlsbad, Irvine, and San Jose in California;

Tokyo in Japan;

Shanghai and Shenzhen in China;

Taipei and Hsinchu in Taiwan;

Bangalore in India;

Burnaby in Canada;

Paterna in Spain;

and Singapore.

We have direct sales personnel covering the United States, Europe and Asia.

We also employ a staff of field applications engineers to provide direct engineering support locally to some of our customers.

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Our typical sales cycle consists of a multi-month sales and development process involving our customers’ system designers and management.

The typical time from early engagement by our sales force to actual product introduction ranges from nine to twelve months for the consumer market, to as much as 18 to 24 months for the cable and satellite markets, and 36 months or longer for industrial, wired and wireless infrastructure markets.

If successful, this process culminates in a customer’s decision to use our products in its system, which we refer to as a design-win.

Volume production may begin within three to twelve months after a design-win, depending on the complexity of our customer’s product and other factors upon which we may have little or no influence.

Once our products have been incorporated into a customer’s design, they are likely to be used for the life cycle of the customer’s product.

Thus, a design-win may result in an extended period of revenue generation.

Conversely, a design-loss to our competitors may adversely impact our financial results for an extended period of time.

We generally receive purchase orders from our customers approximately six to twenty-six weeks prior to the scheduled product delivery date.

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Our standard warranty provides that products containing defects in materials, workmanship or product performance may be returned for a refund of the purchase price or for replacement, at our discretion.

Raw Materials

As a fabless designer of integrated circuits, we do not directly procure raw materials and instead, rely on third parties to manufacture, assemble and test, or supply, our products, as described in further detail under the below heading “Manufacturing.” To a lesser extent, we also purchase certain turnkey, or finished goods product, for resale.

Raw materials used by third party foundries, assembly and test contractors and turnkey product vendors include silicon wafers, as well as lead frames or substrate materials, gold or copper wires, and molding compounds used in assembly/packaging and test of our products.

We work closely with our vendors in providing a supplier forecast 6-12 months in advance to ensure they have an adequate supply of raw materials to cover our forecast.

Manufacturing

We use third-party foundries and assembly and test contractors to manufacture, assemble and test our products.

We also rely on certain vendors to supply turnkey products, including, in particular, Intel Corporation for certain products we sell following our acquisition of Intel’s Home Gateway Platform Division in July 2020.

This outsourced manufacturing approach allows us to focus our resources on the design, sale and marketing of our products.

engineers work closely with our foundries and other contractors to increase yield, lower manufacturing costs and improve product quality while maintaining a socially responsible supply chain.

Our engineers work closely with our foundries and other contractors to increase yield, lower manufacturing costs and improve product quality while maintaining a socially responsible supply chain.

Wafer Fabrication.

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Our key foundry partners include Global Foundries Inc.

in Singapore, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation or SMIC in China, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation or TSMC in Taiwan, and United Microelectronics Corporation or UMC in Taiwan and Singapore.

in Singapore, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation or SMIC in China, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation

or TSMC in Taiwan, and United Microelectronics Corporation or UMC in Taiwan and Singapore.

We generally do not depend on a single source for the supply of our materials.

Additionally, certain of the acquired products of the Wi-Fi and Broadband assets business are supplied to us under the terms of a supply agreement with Intel.

Assembly/packaging and Test.

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The majority of our assembly/packaging and test requirements are supported by the following independent subcontractors:

Advanced Semiconductor Engineering or ASE in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore (assembly/packaging and test), Amkor Technology in Korea and China (assembly/packaging and test), Giga Solution Technology Co.

in Taiwan (test only), SIGURD Microelectronics Corp.

in Taiwan (test only), Unisem (M) Berhad in China (assembly/packaging only) and United Test and Assembly Center or UTAC Holdings Ltd.

in Singapore, Thailand, and China (assembly/packaging and test).

Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, or ASE, Amkor Technology, Giga Solution Technology Co.

Ltd., SIGURD Microelectronics Corp., Unisem (M) Berhad and United Test and Assembly Center, or UTAC Holdings Ltd.

Quality Assurance.

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Corporate Social Responsibility

We are also committed to the use of a socially responsible supply chain to reduce the risk of human rights violations and the use of conflict minerals (tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold, or 3TG) from the Democratic Republic of Congo and certain adjoining countries.

As we continue to expand our presence around the world, we are mindful of our responsibility to maintain a socially responsible supply chain, reduce our carbon footprint, and give back to our local communities.

Socially responsible supply chain.

We are committed to the use of a socially responsible supply chain to reduce the risk of human rights violations and the use of conflict minerals (tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold, or 3TG) from the Democratic Republic of Congo and certain adjoining countries.

Our efforts include maintaining a supplier policy which bars the use of forced or child labor and slavery and a conflict minerals policy governing the use and distribution of 3TG minerals, as well as conducting due diligence before allowing a potential supplier to become a preferred supplier.

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We also conduct recurring internal trainings for all employees and certain select contractors on export compliance, anti-corruption and anti-slavery, and insider trading.

Reduce our carbon footprint .

We aim to reduce the environmental impact of our products.

We provide products to our customers that use approved environmentally-friendly materials, prevent pollution by minimizing waste and promoting recycling of reusable materials, and provide customer satisfaction through compliance with global environmental regulations as they relate to our products and operations.

Contributing to community.

We encourage our employees to contribute to local communities.

In 2020, the Company’s U.S.

employees organized a fund-raising campaign to feed the hungry in local communities, which has increased as a result of closures and job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Together with a matching corporate contribution from the Company, the campaign raised in excess of $60 thousand, benefiting Feeding America, a U.S.

hunger- relief organization.

Research and Development

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Our engineering design teams are located in Carlsbad, Irvine, and San Jose in California;

Shenzhen in China;

Hsinchu in Taiwan;

Bangalore in India;

Burnaby in Canada;

Paterna in Spain;

and Singapore.

We compete with both established and development-stage semiconductor companies that design, manufacture and market analog and mixed-signal broadband RF receivers, optical interconnects, high-performance interface, data and video compression and encryption, and power management products.

Massachusetts;

Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong in China;

Taipei and Hsinchu in Taiwan;

Bangalore, India;

and Austria, Germany, Israel, Spain, and Canada.

compression and encryption, and power management products.

Our competitors include companies with much longer operating histories, greater name recognition, access to larger customer bases and substantially greater financial, technical and operational resources, as well as smaller companies specializing in narrow markets, to internal or vertically integrated engineering groups within certain of our customers.

In addition, our industry is experiencing substantial consolidation.

As a result, our competitors

are increasingly large multi-national semi-conductor companies with substantial market influence.

As a result, our competitors are increasingly large multi-national semi-conductor companies with substantial market influence.

Our competitors may develop products that are similar or superior to ours.

We consider our primary competitors to be companies with a proven track record of supporting market leaders and the technical capability to develop and bring to market competing broadband RF receiver and RF receiver SoC, modem, and optical interconnect products.

Our primary merchant semiconductor competitors include Silicon Labs, NXP Semiconductors N.V, MediaTek, Inc., Broadcom Ltd, Rafael Microelectronics, Inc., Inphi Corporation, M/A-COM Technology Solutions Holdings, Inc., Semtech Corporation, Qorvo Inc., Texas Instruments, HiSilicon Technologies Co., Ltd., Analog Devices, Renesas Electronics Corporation, Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., Monolithic Power Systems, Microchip Technology, Inc., Ambarella, Inc., and Infineon Technologies AG.

Our primary merchant semiconductor competitors include Silicon Laboratories, Inc., NXP Semiconductors N.V., MediaTek, Inc., Broadcom Ltd, Rafael Microelectronics, Inc., Inphi Corporation, M/A-COM Technology Solutions Holdings, Inc., Semtech Corporation, Qorvo Inc., Texas Instruments Incorporated, HiSilicon Technologies Co., Ltd., Analog Devices, Inc., Renesas Electronics Corporation, Maxim Integrated Products, Inc.

(which recently entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Analog Devices), Monolithic Power Systems, Inc., Microchip Technology, Inc., Ambarella, Inc., and Infineon Technologies AG.

Because our products often are building block semiconductors which provide functions that in some cases can be integrated into more complex integrated circuits, we also face competition from manufacturers of integrated circuits, some of which may be existing customers or platform partners that develop their own integrated circuit products.

If we cannot offer an attractive solution for applications where our competitors offer more fully integrated products, we may lose significant market share to our competitors.

Certain of our competitors have fully-integrated tuner/demodulator/video processing solutions targeting high-performance cable, satellite, or DTV applications, and thereby potentially provide customers with smaller and cheaper solutions.

Some of our targeted customers for our optical interconnect solutions are module makers who are vertically integrated, where we compete with internally supplied components, and we compete with much larger analog and mixed-signal catalog competitors in the multi-market high-performance analog markets.

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• product roadmap;

• reputation;

• reliability;

We believe that we compete favorably as measured against each of these criteria.

However, our ability to compete in the future will depend upon the successful design, development and marketing of compelling RF, mixed-signal and high-performance analog semiconductor integrated solutions for high growth communications markets.

However, our ability to compete in the future will depend upon the successful design, development and marketing of compelling RF, analog, digital, and mixed-signal semiconductor integrated solutions for high growth communications markets.

In addition, our competitive position will depend on our ability to continue to attract and retain talent while protecting our intellectual property.

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We are the owner of approximately 10 trademarks that have been registered and/or allowed for registration in the United States.

We own foreign counterparts (including approximately 49 foreign registrations) of certain of these registered trademarks in Australia, Canada, Chile, China, the EU, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.

We own foreign counterparts (including approximately 36 foreign registrations) of certain of these registered trademarks in Canada, Chile, China, the EU, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.

We also claim common law rights in certain other trademarks that are not registered.

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Moreover, we have adopted a strategy of seeking limited patent protection with respect to the technologies used in or relating to our products.

We are a party to a number of license agreements for various technologies, such as a license agreement with Intel Corporation relating to demodulator technologies that are licensed specifically for use in our products for cable set-top boxes.

The agreement was originally entered into with Texas Instruments but was subsequently assigned to Intel Corporation as part of Intel Corporation’s acquisition of Texas Instruments’ cable modem product line in 2010.

The license agreement with Intel Corporation has a perpetual term, but Intel Corporation may terminate the agreement for any uncured material breach or in the event of bankruptcy.

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We believe we could find a substitute for the currently licensed demodulator technology in the marketplace on commercially reasonable terms or develop the demodulator technology ourselves.

In either case, obtaining new licenses or replacing existing technology could have a material adverse effect on our business, as described in “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Our Business — We utilize a significant amount of intellectual property in our business.

In either case, obtaining new licenses or replacing existing technology could have a material adverse effect on our business, as described in “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Intellectual Property — We utilize a significant amount of intellectual property in our business.

If we are unable to protect our intellectual property, our business could be adversely affected .”

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We may in the future be contacted by third parties suggesting that we seek a license to intellectual property rights that they may believe we are infringing.

In addition, in the future, we may be subject to lawsuits by third parties seeking to enforce their own intellectual property rights, as described in “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Our Business — We have settled in the past intellectual property litigation and may face additional claims of intellectual property infringement.

In addition, in the future, we may be subject to lawsuits by third parties seeking to enforce their own intellectual property rights, as described in “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Intellectual Property — We have settled in the past intellectual property litigation and may face additional claims of intellectual property infringement.

Current litigation and any future litigation could be time-consuming, costly to defend or settle and result in the loss of significant rights ” and in “Item 3 — Legal Proceedings.”

Governmental Regulation

Our business and operations around the world are subject to government regulation at the national, state, provincial, or local level addressing, among other matters, applicable environmental laws;

health and safety laws and regulations adopted by government agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration;

laws relating to export controls and economic sanctions;

and the rules of industrial standards bodies such as the International Standards Organization and governmental agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission.

We believe that our properties and operations comply in all material respects with applicable laws protecting the environment and worker health and safety.

We do not manufacture our own products but do maintain laboratory space at certain of our facilities to facilitate the development, evaluation, and testing of our products.

These laboratories may maintain quantities of hazardous materials.

While we believe we are in material compliance with applicable law concerning the safeguarding of these materials and with respect to other matters relating to health, safety, and the environment, the risk of liability relating to hazardous conditions or materials cannot be eliminated completely.

To date, we have not incurred significant

expenditures relating to environmental compliance at our facilities nor have we experienced any material issues relating to employee health and safety.

We cannot provide assurances, however, that issues will not arise in the future or that applicable law will not require us to incur significant compliance expenditures.

In addition to environmental laws, our business is subject to various rules and regulations and executive orders relating to export controls and trade sanctions.

Certain of our products are subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), which are administered by the United States Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), and we are periodically required to obtain an export license before we can export certain controlled products or technology to specified countries or customers.

In addition, the EAR imposes broad controls on entities listed on sanctioned persons lists, including the BIS “Denied Persons” list and BIS Entity list.

If one of our customers is listed on the BIS Entity List, BIS List of Denied Persons, or other U.S.

government sanctioned persons list, then subject to certain limited exceptions, we will, as a general rule, be precluded from doing business with that customer.

We cannot guarantee that export control restrictions or imposition of sanctions imposed in the future will not prevent, or materially limit, our ability to conduct business certain customers or in certain countries.

Any failure to comply with these laws could result in governmental enforcement actions, including substantial monetary penalties and denial of export privileges.

Employees and Human Capital

Our future success depends on our ability to retain, attract and motivate qualified personnel, especially our design and technical personnel, but also our senior management and support personnel.

As the source of our technological and product innovations, our design and technical personnel represent a significant asset.

We emphasize our core values of Excellence, People, Integrity, and Compassion (EPIC) in our hiring and human resources practices as well as our customer service.

We have a diverse workforce that represents many cultures and we celebrate our diversity by fostering inclusion across our multi-national organization.

We acknowledge that we, along with the semiconductor and technology industry as a whole, can do more to advance gender and racial equality by increasing representation of underrepresented minorities as well as females in leadership and technical positions including engineering and other roles.

As of December 31, 2020, we had approximately 1420 employees, including 1,069 in research and development, 200 in sales and marketing, 46 in operations and semiconductor technology and 105 in administration.

None of our employees is represented by a labor organization or under any collective bargaining arrangement, and we have never had a work stoppage.

We consider our employee relations to be good.

Our sales are made primarily pursuant to standard purchase orders.

Because industry practice allows customers to reschedule, or in some cases, cancel orders on relatively short notice, we do not believe that backlog is a good indicator of our future sales.

We have employees across 18 countries:

38% are in Asia, 29% in the Americas, 19% in Europe and 14% in the Middle East.

Our workforce is represented by the following race/ethnicities:

53% Asian, 40% White or Middle Eastern, 7% Latinx or Hispanic origin, with 36% Asian and 64% White or Middle Eastern in senior management.

Females represented 14% of our outside directors, 9% of senior management, 10% of our technical roles, and 18% of our total workforce.

Of our total employee workforce, 13% is represented by Work Councils in Austria and Germany.

The Work Council groups, common to these countries, are comprised of employees elected by the general employee base.

We consider our global employee relations to be good.

In 2020, our employee voluntary turnover rate was 8%.

Our human capital resources objectives include, as applicable, attracting and retaining talented and experienced employees, advisors, and consultants.

We utilize multiple online search tools, specialized recruiting firms, employee referral programs and university hires to ensure a varied outreach approach for candidates.

We aim to reduce the gender pay gap that is pervasive in our industry.

We offer this via a combination of competitive base salary, time-based equity incentives and bonus plans linked to financial performance that are designed to motivate and reward personnel with annual grants of stock-based and cash-based incentive compensation awards to our employees, some of which vest over a period of four years, plus other benefits, in order to increase stockholder value and the success of our company by motivating such individuals to perform to the best of their abilities and achieve both our short and long-term objectives.

We offer competitive benefits tailored to local markets and laws and designed to support employee health, welfare and retirement;

examples of such benefits may include paid time off;

401(k), pension or other retirement plans;

employee stock purchase plan;

basic and voluntary life, disability and supplemental insurance;

medical, dental and vision insurance;

health savings and flexible spending accounts;

relocation assistance;

and employee assistance programs.

Our global training and development program focuses on harassment-free workplace and diversity topics, as well as ethics and export compliance.

Our executive compensation structure aligns executive incentives with the long-term growth objectives of MaxLinear, including long-term share price appreciation.

In that regard, our executive compensation programs have tended to place a relatively heavier weighting on equity compensation than our peers and include a performance-based metric to executives’ equity incentives in addition to other forms of compensation offered to all employees.

For more details regarding our executive compensation, refer to information incorporated by reference from the information set forth under the captions “Executive Compensation” and “Compensation Discussion and Analysis” in either an amendment to this Annual Report on Form 10-K or our 2021 Proxy Statement.

In 2020, our ongoing focus on workplace safety and compliance to applicable regulations has enabled us to preserve business continuity while ensuring a safe work environment during the COVID-19 pandemic, including work-from-home arrangements for a substantial portion of our workforce and reduced capacity for those that have returned to the office, adhering to local health authority guidelines.

We also comply with applicable laws and regulations regarding workplace safety and are subject to audits by entities such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the United States.

We rely on third parties to manufacture our products and require our suppliers to maintain a safe work environment, as described in further detail under the below heading “Manufacturing.”

The semiconductor industry is highly cyclical and is characterized by constant and rapid technological change, rapid product obsolescence and price erosion, evolving technical standards, short product life cycles and wide fluctuations in product supply and demand.

2 unchanged sentences

Compared sentence by sentence after normalising whitespace, quotation marks, case and digits, so re-formatting and restated figures do not read as changed language. Wording changes appear as one removal and one addition. The current filing and the prior one are authoritative.

What changed 10-K

Item 1. Business