Follow the mergers, spinoffs, and sales: Broadcom might acquire Agere, says Light Reading: Lucent acquired WaveLAN, an early 802.11b chipmaker, and later spun off its Wi-Fi division when it turned Agere loose. Agere, in turn, sold its wireless LAN portfolio to Proxim when it seemed to be of less interest to them to market and develop, but they continue to make Wi-Fi chips.
Lucent/Agere was the original chipmaker for many of the first wave of OEM Wi-Fi products, such as Linksys and Apple's gear. Broadcom was the chipmaker of choice for the first wave of 802.11g, so it's ironic that they migth bring Agere into their fold, wireless products aside.
Light Reading notes that Agere has just a few product lines that Broadcom doesn't already have entries in, such as hard drive chips and certain telecom products. [link via GigaOm]