Teradyne (NYSE: TER), the world's leading ATE manufacturer of in-circuit test equipment, today announced the availability of two new pin cards for its TestStation ICT platform. Christopher McNally, ICT marketing director at Teradyne's Assembly Test Division, said, "These new UltraPin II 121 and 121a pin board products make our TestStation the most versatile ICT platform in the industry. TestStation users now have unparalleled flexibility in configuring a test system to best match their fault coverage, test strategy and budget requirements." With the addition of these pin cards TestStation becomes the only ICT system to offer manufacturers a choice of pin board options that include multiplexed or pure pin, analog only or hybrid and low pin-count or high pin-count. McNally added, "Backed by our best-in-class UltraPin II pin technology and new user-friendly Debug Pro development software environment (also announced today), TestStation systems are ideal for supporting multi-line ICT floors with fluctuating test needs."
Introducing the UltraPin II 121 digital and 121a analog pin boards
The UltraPin II 121 and 121a pin boards offer true non-multiplexed operation. Their unique architecture enables unrestricted pin assignments for both analog and digital test applications and provides maximum flexibility when programming driver/sensor logic levels, sense thresholds, slew rates and backdrive limits. Other solutions tend to compromise in these areas, which can result in unwanted programming, fixture and debug difficulties.
The UltraPin II 121 pin board lowers the entry price point of pure-pin test configurations with ultra-low voltage and SafeTest capabilities. Its 15 mV drive and sense accuracy, 2.3 mV programming resolution, low driver impedance and ability to monitor and program backdrive currents to 15 mA make the TestStation the industry's most capable in-circuit pin tester. Its specified accuracy is up to 13 times greater than the majority of conventional ICT systems -- ensuring that TestStation is ready for tomorrow's ultra-low voltage technologies. The UltraPin II 121 pin board has 128 real (non-multiplexed) digital/analog pins per board and supports a maximum of 2,048 high-performance pins when configured in a TestStation LH, or 3,840 when installed in the LX model.
The 121a is a low-cost, pure-pin analog only board with 128 analog pins optimized for the accurate and reliable powered and un-powered testing of analog components and electrical specifications. TestStation systems support mixing UltraPin II 121 and 121a pin boards in the same system for maximum price and performance flexibility.
Both boards utilize an ICA module used to passively detect shorts, opens and incorrect component values. Their analog functional test capacity can verify active (powered) component parameters such as transistor beta, op amp closed-loop gain, diode characteristics and transfer measurements. The ICA module also provides additional resources for direct digital synthesis-based arbitrary waveform generation, full 8-wire measurement capability, synchronous sampling techniques for more precise RLC measurements and a universal 16-bit sampling DVM.
Another limiting design factor for competitive pin cards is often the quantity, speed and availability of analog bus channels for multi-wire testing. The new UltraPin II 121 and 121a support a standard 4-wire non-multiplexed analog bus, and also allows dynamic 6-wire and 8-wire testing to be performed when maximum accuracy is required. Analog only TestStation systems configured with 121a pin boards can perform high-speed analog measurements with repeated accuracy and reliability. New manufacturers can install flexibility knowing that high-performance digital test capabilities of these boards can be added to the TestStation should they be required. Building TestStation's pin scalability makes it more future ready by allowing manufacturers to optimize their equipment capacity, minimize capital investments and reduce service costs.
"To protect the investments made by those who have invested in Teradyne's older generation GR228X and TS12X test fixtures," said Mr. McNally, "and to preserve the proliferation of test programs already generated by our many customers, these UltraPin II systems are configured for full backward compatibility. The UltraPin II 121a is also optimized to run Teradyne's FrameScan FX vectorless test techniques to simultaneously increase pin fault coverage and measurement strength."
Starting prices of UltraPin II TestStation configurations are less than $100,000 (USD). Contact any one of Teradyne's worldwide sales offices for detailed board configurations and pricing at 1-800-Teradyne.
About Teradyne, Inc.
Teradyne (NYSE:TER) is a leading supplier of Automatic Test Equipment used to test complex electronics used in the consumer electronics, automotive, computing, telecommunications, and aerospace and defense industries. In 2005, Teradyne had sales of $1.08 billion, and currently employs about 3,800 people worldwide. For more information, visit www.teradyne.com. Teradyne (R) is a registered trademark of Teradyne, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All product names are trademarks of Teradyne, Inc. (including its subsidiaries) or their respective owners.
