Press Release: Virata Becomes MetaSwitch Interoperability Partner

Virata's Voice Chipsets Achieve Successful Interoperability With OpenVoB Member's Broadband Voice Platform

Alameda, CA and Santa Clara, CA: May 14, 2001. Virata® Corporation [Nasdaq: VRTA] and MetaSwitch today announced that Virata's Azurite^TM voice chipsets have successfully passed interoperability testing with MetaSwitch's VP3000 Integrated Broadband Voice Platform for the delivery of toll-quality Voice-over-DSL (VoDSL) telephone calls and subscriber services such as Caller ID. Virata and MetaSwitch are helping to accelerate the development of Voice over Broadband by ensuring that their products support and promote open standards that enable any integrated access device (IAD) to operate with any voice gateway. Virata has also joined the growing MetaSwitch Interoperability Partner community.

"As a MetaSwitch Interoperability Partner, we are well-positioned to deliver proven, pre-integrated components that meet accepted industry standards, and help service providers and equipment makers overcome the various compatibility issues that exist when integrating voice capabilities into a network environment featuring DSL or wireless access points," said Duncan Greatwood, vice president of marketing at Virata. "By using our open, non-proprietary solution that interoperates with equipment from a broad range of leading vendors, we are able to help our customers reduce the time it takes for them to get their products to market, and reduce their design and manufacturing costs - factors which will be instrumental in driving the growth of the broadband voice market."

Following a series of tests hosted at MetaSwitch's interoperability lab facilities, an IAD based on Virata's Azurite chipsets achieved interoperability with MetaSwitch's award-winning VP3000 Integrated Broadband Voice Platform. By combining broadband voice and Class 5 switching functions in a high density, carrier class system, the VP3000 provides a cost-effective VoDSL solution, which is designed to eliminate the requirement for an expensive Class 5 switch. Support for the ATM Forum's Broadband Loop Emulation Service (BLES) also ensures interoperability with a wide variety of DSLAM and IAD devices. In addition, the VP3000's future-proof softswitch architecture offers a clear upgrade path to Voice over IP and MPLS (VoIP/MPLS) and other broadband voice services, including wireless and cable.

"The growing acceptance of well-defined international standards, particularly the ATM Forum Broadband Loop Emulation Service (BLES), makes this kind of interoperability result much more straightforward than it used to be with first-generation, proprietary VoDSL solutions," said John Lazar, MetaSwitch's vice president of sales and marketing. "Virata clearly recognizes how important interoperability is for their customers - and ultimately service providers - and are therefore partnering with MetaSwitch to help turn Voice over Broadband into a plug-and-play technology, and shift the emphasis to the real product differentiators."

About Virata's Azurite Chipsets

Azurite is Virata's family of pre-integrated voice-over-DSL chipsets, which combine Helium^TM or Beryllium^TMcommunication processors, networking software, Magnesium^TMvoice DSPs, voice algorithms, and voice protocols into a pre-integrated CPE solution. Azurite offers system developers full flexibility and control of integrated service resources to aid in the development of next-generation, voice-enabled DSL products.

About MetaSwitch

MetaSwitch was formed by Data Connection (DCL) to build best-of-breed solutions for Voice-over-DSL and other broadband voice requirements, based on the unrivaled software and hardware experience, expertise and technology that Data Connection has built up over nearly twenty profitable years supplying the most demanding Service Provider and equipment vendor customers. MetaSwitch is a founding member of the OpenVoB group.

MetaSwitch builds on the powerful foundation created by Data Connection, pulling together its massive ongoing investment in the technology required to build converged network solutions (such as ATM, SS7, MPLS, MGCP/H.248, SIP), and new revenue-generating services (directory, unified messaging, data/audio/video conferencing). The MetaSwitch support and customer management infrastructure taps right into the deep reservoir of professionalism and experience Data Connection has developed by helping its large strategic customers deliver successful products and services.

MetaSwitch and Data Connection have offices in Alameda (California), Reston (Virginia), and Enfield (North London), Chester and Edinburgh in the UK. For information, visit www.metaswitch.com.

About Virata

Virata provides communications software and semiconductors to manufacturers of DSL, wireless, satellite, and other broadband networking equipment. Virata's suite of processor-independent software products provide developers with complete, field-proven implementations of networking functions, including ATM, MPLS, and web servers, removing the need to write and validate new software code.

Virata also pre-integrates its extensive suite of communications software with its powerful and cost-effective communications processors to create Integrated Software on Silicon^TM (ISOS^TM) products. These ISOS solutions assist customers in developing a diverse range of broadband wireless and wireline equipment including DSL modems, gateways, routers, and integrated access devices targeted at the voice and high-speed data network access and customer premises markets. Virata's products also help equipment manufacturers to simplify product development, reduce the time it takes for products to reach the market and focus resources on product differentiation and improvement.

Virata is a principal member of the ATM Forum, Bluetooth SIG organization, the DSL Forum, HomePNA, ITU, MPLS Forum, OpenDSL consortium and UPnP Forum. A publicly traded company on the Nasdaq Stock Market, Virata was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

Virata is a registered trademark, and Azurite, Beryllium, Helium, Magnesium, ISOS and Integrated Software on Silicon are trademarks of Virata. Data Connection and MetaSwitch are trademarks of Data Connection Limited and Data Connection Corporation. All other trade, product, or service names referenced in this release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Except for historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Due to increasing uncertainties in the company's market, the company's degree of visibility on future revenues and earnings and associated confidence level in forecast information is less than in past quarters. Factors that might cause a difference include, but are not limited to, those relating to general business and economic conditions, evolving industry standards, the pace of development and market acceptance of our products, those of our customers and the DSL market generally, the rate of DSL deployments, commercialization and technological delays or difficulties, changes in customer order patterns and the product volume of such orders, the financial condition of our customers, risks of customer loss, the impact of competitive products and technologies, competitive pricing pressures, manufacturing availability and risks, dependence on third party suppliers, the uncertainties associated with international operations, the possibility of our products infringing patents and other intellectual property of third parties, risks due to limited protection of our intellectual property, product defects, costs of product development, our ability to attract and retain employees, the company's ability to extract value from acquisitions, manufacturing and government regulation and other risk factors listed from time to time in the reports and other documents Virata files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation, the report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended December 31, 2000. Virata assumes no obligation to revise or update the forward-looking statements contained in this press release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.