BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 16, 2002--Teradyne announced National Semiconductor Corporation of Santa Clara, CA has purchased a Tiger test system for characterization and multi-site production test of System-on-Chip (SOC) devices with multi-Giga-bit interfaces. The selection of Tiger was based on the system's advanced capability to provide the new accuracy, speed and repeatability requirements for National Semiconductor's next generation high-speed communications devices.

"The Tiger was the logical next step forward to handle the digital needs for higher speeds, differential pins, and higher pin count, while keeping the great array of Catalyst analog instruments," said Affif Farhat, SerDes Product Test Development Manager, National Semiconductor. "In addition to meeting new accuracy, speed and repeatability requirements for our devices, Tiger provides the lowest overall cost of ownership compared to other new test platforms," concluded Guy Nicholson, Director of SerDes Product and Test Engineering, National Semiconductor.

"Our new Giga-bit speed display devices required Tiger's precision high speed differential pin electronics," said Dennis Chan, Display Products Test Development Manager, National Semiconductor. "Being able to easily migrate to the next generation Catalyst platform was important to our test development productivity," added Steve Ichikawa, Director of Product and Test Engineering, National Semiconductor.

"With Tiger any digital pin can be licensed at any speed. National Semiconductor will pay for what they need - when they need it," said Rob Mosher, Product Marketing Manager, Teradyne. "Tiger is designed to meet changing test needs. As National Semiconductor's test demands evolve with the next-generation of communications devices, Tiger is ready."

About Tiger

Catalyst Tiger is the first over 1 Gbps SOC test system. Extending the Catalyst Family, Tiger offers the flexibility and scalability required by leading fabless subcontractors and integrated device manufacturers by providing economical at-speed testing for a variety of leading edge devices. Tiger offers up to 1024 digital pins while combining unequaled analog test capability, timing flexibility, and programmable speed enabling all in one versatile platform. Tiger's new 3.2 Gbps SerDes Port Qualifier and 9 GHz GigaDig instruments extend the Tiger platform and position it as the premier platform for testing high speed communications devices.

About Teradyne

Teradyne (NYSE: TER) is the world's largest supplier of automatic test equipment and is also a leading supplier of high performance interconnection systems. Teradyne's test products are used by manufacturers of semiconductors, circuit assemblies, voice and broadband telephone networks. Teradyne's backplane assemblies and high-density connectors are used by manufacturers of communications and computing systems central to building networking infrastructure. The company had sales of $1.4 billion in 2001 and currently employs about 8000 people worldwide. For more information visit www.teradyne.com.