The deal is the latest in a wave of acquisitions for Irvine, Calif-based Broadcom, which wants to be a one-stop-shopping equipment and chip supplier to link computers, telephones and televisions over high-speed networks. Shares of Broadcom were up 8-15/16 to 234 near midday on the Nasdaq stock market following news of the deal.

Broadcom said it would issue about 5.5 million class A common shares in exchange for all of NewPort's preferred and common stock, employee stock options, warrants and other rights. NewPort is also based in Irvine. The deal, expected to close within 60 days, is Broadcom's 13th acquisition since June 1999 and comes just one week after it announced plans to buy Silicon Spice Inc, a developer of semiconductor technology, for about $1.2 billion.

Broadcom also recently unveiled plans to buy Altima Communications Inc, a maker of networking circuits, for about $533 million. NewPort supplies high-speed communications chips for the optical networking industry to enable the telecommunications industry to support emerging bandwidth demands of multi-server digital voice, data and video services.

"The acquisition of NewPort Communications ... is not only synergistic with our 10-gigabit ethernet technology but is also complementary to the communications processor technology that we are acquiring through our merger with Silicon Spice Inc," Broadcom president and chief executive Henry Nicholas said in a statement.