Aavid Thermal Technologies, Inc. Announces the Appointment of Gerald Walle as President and Chief Operating Officer of Aavid Thermalloy, LLC

Business Wire, March 5, 2001

Business/Technology Editors

CONCORD, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 5, 2001

Aavid Thermal Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of thermal management solutions and developer of computational fluid dynamics software, today announced the appointment of Gerald Walle as President and Chief Operating Officer of Aavid Thermalloy, LLC, the Company's thermal management solutions subsidiary. Mr. Walle most recently served as the Chief Financial Officer of Emprix, Inc., a provider of test and monitoring solutions for Web, data and voice applications. From 1987 through 1999, he was the Vice President and General Manager of the Microelectronics Division of Millipore, a high technology corporation that develops, manufactures and sells a broad range of purification products for the biopharmaceutical and microelectronics industries.

Prior to 1987, Gerald was the International Marketing Manager for a global manufacturer and distributor of clinical chemistry and blood gas analyzers. Prior to that, he held business development and consulting positions at the Paris, France based offices of Mars & Co. and the Boston Consulting Group, respectively. Mr. Walle earned an engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Business School.

Bart Patel, Aavid's President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We are excited to have someone with Gerald's extensive experience in managing multinational operations. We believe that Gerald's diverse knowledge of worldwide manufacturing, sales, marketing, and research and development will significantly enhance Aavid Thermalloy's position in the global marketplace."

Company Background

Aavid Thermal Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of thermal management solutions for dissipating potentially damaging heat from digital and industrial electronics.

Aavid serves a highly diversified range of markets, principally in North America, Europe and the Far East, driven by the company's operations in two distinct markets: thermal management solutions and computational fluid dynamics software.

Thermal management solutions include products and services that solve problems associated with the dissipation of unwanted heat in electronic and electrical components and systems.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software permits computer modeling and flow analysis of products and processes that would otherwise require time-consuming and expensive physical models and the facilities to test them.

Ongoing increases in silicon and system integration, higher processing speeds and frequencies, smaller form factors, more sophisticated power requirements and other advances in chip technology create excessive heat in microprocessors and IC's (semiconductors) in electronic and electrical components and systems. Microprocessors and integrated circuits operate efficiently only in a narrow temperature band. The excessive heat generated by these semiconductors not only harms their own performance but also degrades system performance and reliability and can cause system failure. The increasingly wide range of environmental conditions, including temperature extremes, in which electronic systems are expected to operate, exacerbates these negative effects. The use of Aavid's thermal solutions helps maintain device and system performance and reliability and helps avoid premature component and system failure.

Additional information on Aavid Thermal Technologies is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.aatt.com.

"Safe Harbor" Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995

The matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements (as such term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) and information relating to the Company that is based on the beliefs of the management of the Company, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the management of the Company. The words "estimate," "project," "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the current views of the Company with respect to future events, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in such forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.