July 15, 2002 – Santa Clara, CA – National Semiconductor Corp. has joined the RapidIO trade association formed to drive the adoption of an open standard, high-performance interconnect architecture.

The RapidIO architecture addresses the needs of present and future systems for a point-to-point, packet-switched interconnect. The RapidIO interconnect allows chip-to-chip and board-to-board communications at performance levels scaling to 10 Gigabits/second and beyond.

“National Semiconductor’s strategic focus in the high speed interface area is perfectly aligned to the RapidIO charter and objective,” said Jim Wieser, CTO of National Semiconductor’s wired communications division. “We have been developing low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS), Bus-LVDS as well as other GHz speed serial backplane solutions for years and RapidIO is a natural extension of our focus and roadmap. National Semiconductor fully supports the RapidIO initiative and objectives and we look forward to a strong partnership moving forward.”

“RapidIO was developed as a common protocol architecture for the high-performance, low-cost, high reliability interconnect needs of embedded and communications systems,” said Sam Fuller, RapidIO president.

The RapidIO trade association is a non-profit organization with headquarters in Austin, TX, that was formed to drive the adoption of an open standard, high-performance interconnect architecture. Since incorporating in June 2000, the association has grown to over 50 member companies worldwide.