PMC-Sierra (PMC-Sierra) Net Investment Income

PMC-Sierra Inc was incorporated in the state of California in 1983 and reincorporated in the state of Delaware in 1997. The Company is a semiconductor and and software solution provider transforming networks that connect, move and store digital content. It designs, develops, markets and supports semiconductor solutions by integrating its mixed-signal, software and systems expertise through a network of offices in North America, Europe and Asia. The Company has approximately 700 different semiconductor devices that are sold to equipment and design manufacturers, who in turn supply their equipment principally to service providers, carriers and enterprises globally. The Company provides semiconductor solutions for its customers by leveraging its intellectual property, design expertise and systems knowledge across a range of applications and industry protocols. The Company derives its net revenues from the following operating segments: Communication Products, Enterprise Storage Products, Microprocessor Products, and Broadband Wireless Products. The Company operates in one reportable segment-semiconductor solutions for communications network infrastructure. Its semiconductor devices enable networking equipment primarily in the following three end market segments: Storage, Optical and Mobile networks. The Storage market segment is made up of enterprise storage equipment manufacturers and covers two broad areas: server storage, and stand-alone external storage systems. The Optical market segment refers to infrastructure suppliers of transport and access networks that use optical transport protocol and/or physical optical medium. The Mobile market segment is mainly infrastructure equipment suppliers, including base station and backhaul equipment, supporting the wireless transmission of content from and to mobile hand devices. The Company faces competition at the customer design stage when its customers are determining which semiconductor components to use in its equipment designs. The Company competes against peer-group semiconductor companies that engage in the communications and storage semiconductor business. These companies include the following: Altera Corp., Applied Micro Circuits Corp.; Broadcom Corp.; Cortina Systems, Inc.; Emulex Corp.; Exar Corp.; Infineon Technologies AG; Intel Corp.; Texas Instrument Inc; LSI Corp.; Maxim Integrated Products, Inc.; Marvell Technology Group Ltd.; Mindspeed Technologies, Inc.; QLogic Corp.; Vitesse Semiconductor; and Xilinx, Inc. The Company has a total of 597 U.S. and 80 foreign patents for circuit designs and other innovations used in the design and architecture of its products. In addition, it has 95 patent applications pending in the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. The Company's business is subject to or may be impacted by various environmental protection and social responsibility legal and customer requirements.