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Washington - Teradyne has launched a family of mixedsignal testers at the International Test Conference here, aimed at the so-called super-chip ICsthose that integrate digital, analog and memory circuitry on a single chip. Dubbed the Catalyst, the family comes to market sporting technical innovations and highly extended digital and analog test facilities.
Although orders for the new machines already have been placed by both Analog Devices and Lucent Technologies, the Catalyst arrives at a time when the semiconductor industryespecially the memory segment-is suffering from a downturn which, although not affecting all vendors or product lines, nevertheless has resulted in spotty book-to-bill ratios, layoffs and delayed plans for new fabrication facilities.
At the same time, another Teradyne division rolled out a new memory tester and a large-scale VLSI ATE machine, the J973, aimed at testing the so-called systems-ona-chip and core-based devices. For those, the J973 comes armed with up to 1024 pins and data rates reaching 400 MHz.
Gunnar Miller, an analyst at Paine Webber in New York City who tracks the ATE industry, said he was "less concerned about Teradyne's product development effort than about the semiconductor industry's demand characteristics-orders have plunged. It is remarkable," he said, "that Teradyne simultaneously rolled out three new products within each of their principle market segments."
High demand
However, Schlumberger ATE's vice president of mixed-signal products, Michel Epsztein, said, "We have not seen...