Press Release:

NeXLev Parallel Board Interconnect Provides 2.5Gb/s Performance & 145 Real Signals per Inch

NASHUA, NH: January 26, 2000--Designed to meet high-bandwidth, high-speed interconnect requirements, Teradyne's NeXLev™ parallel board-to-board connector supports 2.5 Gb/s data rates and provides up to 145 real signals per linear inch.

NeXLev is well suited for a wide range of parallel board-to-board or mezzanine applications. These include daughtercards, motherboards or backplanes for scalable processing, memory modules, or interfacing I/O cabling modules. NeXLev provides system designers with the flexibility to remove high-pin-count devices such as BGAs from daughtercards and place them on smaller grand-daughtercards without any loss in performance. This can help reduce daughtercard complexity, thereby improving production yields. Robust and application friendly, NeXLev utilizes ball-grid attachment technology for termination to the board. Designed with solder joint reliability in mind, the connector is readily applied using standard SMT processes. The product will be supplied in both JEDEC style trays and tape & reel packaging.

NeXLev's density and electrical performance is achieved through its wafer construction, which provides 10 signal contacts on one side paired with a ground plane on the other.

Standard NeXLev connectors can contain from 10 to 30 wafers, or 100 to 300 usable signals per connector. The wafer construction allows for the contacts to be generously spaced on a 1.5mm x 1.75mm grid. This simplifies signal routing through the connector as well as SMT processing. The wafers can be routed for single-ended and differential paired architectures, permitting a wide degree of design freedom. In the differential configuration, NeXLev provides 73 real signal pairs per linear inch.

Continuous signal-to-ground coupling allows NeXLev to achieve electrical performance of less than 5% multi-line crosstalk with less than 5% reflection at 250 ps in the single-ended configuration, or less than 150 ps for the differential-pair version. Current rating will be 0.5A per signal contact with an optimized power wafer to be offered later next year. NeXLev can be specified in separation heights ranging from 10mm to 30mm, maintaining the connector's electrical performance throughout the entire range of heights.

Teradyne's NeXLev connector is available in prototype quantities now and will be in production later in the year. Initial pricing will be in the range of $0.25-0.28 per mated line in production quantities.

About Teradyne, Inc.
Teradyne is the world's largest manufacturer of automatic test equipment (ATE) for the electronics industry. Products include systems to test semiconductor devices, printed circuit assemblies, telephone lines, computerized telephone systems, Internet and Intranet networks, and software. The company is also a leading supplier of high-performance connection systems and backplane assemblies used in the manufacture of electronics.

Teradyne's extensive service network supports customers through a worldwide service and application engineering network, with technical centers located throughout Asia, Europe and North America. Headquartered in Boston, MA, Teradyne reported sales of more than $1.8 billion in 1999 and has approximately 6,100 employees worldwide. The company's Web address is www.teradyne.com.

Teradyne's Connection Systems Division operates worldwide with over 2,000 employees and from facilities comprising more than 600,000 square feet. This includes three dedicated, ISO-9001-certified factories in Nashua, New Hampshire. These facilities are dedicated to the production of multi-layer printed circuits, high-density connectors, and custom backplane assemblies. Other manufacturing facilities are located in Milpitas, CA and Plano, TX. European manufacturing is based at Teradyne's facility near Dublin, Ireland. In 1999, the Connection Systems Division had sales of $388m, or about 21% of Teradyne's overall revenues for the year.