Henry T. Nicholas III, billionaire co-founder and former chief executive of computer chip giant Broadcom Corp., has given $10 million to the private San Juan Capistrano school attended by his three children.

The gift, one of the largest of its kind in the country, comes as UC Irvine researchers, funded in part by Nicholas, begin to explore new uses of classroom technology at St. Margaret's Episcopal, which serves students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

School officials, however, decided to use Nicholas' gift for something more basic: to build an expansive athletic and science center.

Nicholas said that plan is fine with him. "The goal is not necessarily to see more technology in the school. The overriding goal is to see the quality of education improve," Nicholas said. "They want to take the school to the next level, and they have the same goals as I do. Technology is just one way to get there."

Marcus D. Hurlbut, headmaster at the 1,200-student St. Margaret's, said officials a year ago asked Nicholas' wife, Stacey, who is heavily involved in the school, to contribute to a $45-million campaign to finance construction and bolster its modest endowment fund. That was about the same time Nicholas left Broadcom to spend more time with his family.

Nicholas said his gift was largely a result of his renewed focus on his children and, in particular, their education. "I have spent a lot of time at St. Margaret's, and it has opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities."

Hurlbut said the money would cover most of the cost of building an athletic field house that would accommodate more than 1,000 people, with a wing of classrooms and science labs.

He said the gift far exceeded the school's initial hope of finding a donor of at least $6 million to anchor the campaign. The school's largest previous gift was $500,000.

Nicholas' gift places him in an elite class of education philanthropists, national experts said. From 1995 to 2002, only six private, noncollegiate schools in the U.S. received donations of $10 million or more from an individual donor, said Ann Kaplan of the Council for Aid to Education.

"That is a transforming-size gift," said Wilder Baker, a Connecticut-based consultant who advises private schools on development. "It will change the school's ability to function."

The windfall comes at a time that the school is working with UCI scientists to better adapt technology for education. Nicholas has been critical of previous efforts to apply large-business technology to the classroom.

Nicholas said communications technology engineers from UCI will use St. Margaret's as a testing ground and consult with its teachers. Last year, he and his Broadcom co-founder, Henry Samueli, each gave $1.5 million to the UCI center now working with St. Margaret's.

Ultimately, Nicholas said, he expects to transfer useful technology developed at St. Margaret's to public school districts, especially poor ones. He envisions, for example, using technology to better track student performance and to remotely connect disadvantaged students to high-performing classes elsewhere.

He acknowledged that his $10 million could have made an immediate effect at a less affluent public school, but said investing in St. Margaret's would have more long-term benefits by nurturing technology research.

"To go and find the most needy school was tempting because you get immediate gratification and can immediately alleviate this great need," he said. "But the problem with that is that you're attacking the symptoms and not the cause of the disease."