Test systems capable of handling higher throughput or more simultaneous DUTs reduce the need for extra floor space and infrastructure.
Powering everything from smartphones, energy infrastructure, electric transport, and AI systems, semiconductors have become a cornerstone of economic innovation. However, rapid progress has an impact. One recent survey shows that the semiconductor device manufacturing industry more than doubled its annual electricity consumption between 2015 and 2023 – an increase of 125% during that period.
Fig. 1: Tracking greenhouse gas emissions from chip production (2015-2023). (Source: Semiconductor Emission Explorer)
The same report states that the emissions associated with that energy use only increased by 71%, implying wider adoption of lower-carbon energy sources and renewable energy credits (RECs) by the semiconductor manufacturing industry.
This increasing energy use and emissions footprint reflect the semiconductor industry’s role in the economy.
Fig. 2: Electrical energy usage for the different technology nodes. (Source: IMEC)
Higher energy consumption results in increased emissions and higher operational energy costs. In response, industry momentum is shifting toward more sustainable, efficient, and resilient operations. Companies seek solutions that promote environmental responsibility while facilitating technological progress, productivity, operational resilience, and protecting the bottom line. In practice, this involves strategies that complement one another to improve process efficiency, decrease resource use, optimize product yields and high-quality while lowering energy and emissions intensity per device produced. Teradyne’s six pillar strategy promotes solutions that deliver cost-efficient, lower-energy, sustainable and resilient test solutions.
Fig. 3: Teradyne sustainability six pillars.
At Teradyne, we adopt a comprehensive approach to promoting a more sustainable future for the industry, incorporating efficiency and optimization into every part of our product strategy. Let’s examine how these six areas work together to integrate sustainability, productivity, and cost savings into our solutions.
Our emphasis on overall efficiency drives high annual throughput per system, measured by the number of devices processed over time and productivity per square meter of floorspace. This is achieved through our best-in-class test times, and increased test parallelism (a higher number of sites per system), along with a roadmap aimed at enhancing productivity per square meter of floor space. All these factors ensure the lowest cost of test per device.
As power consumption has increased with the proliferation of AI, power and energy efficiency have become critical not only to ensuring the proper stewardship of available resources but also to controlling costs. Every Teradyne product is designed with overall scalability and energy efficiency in mind, with each generation delivering higher productivity and operating efficiency.
Combining this with intelligent automation and equipment operating modes aligned to SEMI S23, our customers now have better control over system energy consumption. For example, our Power Saving Utility tools allow customers to use or enable what they need when they need it. This flexibility to adapt to changing operational demands delivers lower energy usage, directly reducing operational expenses and emissions, making it a clear priority for environmentally conscious businesses.
With the proliferation of advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration (e.g., AI devices and silicon photonics), a critical metric is the energy spent per delivered working device, a metric that shifts the focus from raw power and energy consumption to the efficiency of processes across the value chain.
Teradyne’s ATE instrumentation has best-in-class metrology capabilities, and our production and service processes ensure every product shipped meets our strict performance specification criteria. This is possible due to Teradyne’s adoption of statistical process control (SPC) methodology for every instrument produced, which ensures each instrument meets published specifications. The result is a reduction in scrap/rejected devices, ultimately decreasing material use, lowering energy consumption, and reducing related carbon emissions.
AI and machine learning are opening new avenues for optimizing semiconductor design and manufacturing processes. Analytics solutions mine data for subtle patterns and assist with trimming, repairing, and grading devices to enhance yields.
With Teradyne’s Archimedes analytics solution, our customers can utilize an open development environment that supports real-time analytics and offers the flexibility to deliver both ready-made and custom solutions that are simple to deploy. The natively secure environment minimizes security risks associated with cloud-based solutions, and the structured bi-directional data stream enables fast and efficient analysis. These features allow insights to be fed back to the tester for immediate test adjustments during validation and high-volume testing. Our close integration with leading analytics providers ensures the focus remains on optimizing the test process rather than the connection between the tester and the analytics platform.
By leveraging data gathered at different insertions in the manufacturing process, test strategies can be refined over time. A shift-left/shift-right approach, for example, moves critical testing earlier in the process or adjusts later-stage testing based on real-time insights. This dynamic approach reduces scrap, lowers energy consumption, and ensures a more sustainable production cycle. Analytics also offer opportunities for predictive and preventative maintenance on the manufacturing equipment, minimizing unplanned downtime.
Outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) providers operate in a fast-paced environment that demands unparalleled flexibility. Frequent reconfigurations of test lines and the need to minimize downtime require test systems that can quickly adapt to changing requirements.
Teradyne meets this challenge through a “design for x” culture that delivers customizable and configurable test solutions with the capabilities our customers need that are also reliable, maintainable, serviceable, and durable. We complement those design practices with a dedicated support team of application and product support personnel, who work closely with customers to optimize system performance and ensure system uptime and availability. This collaborative approach ensures that even the most dynamic manufacturing environments can maintain a high degree of efficiency and operational resilience.
Today, industry leaders face shortened time-to-market windows and must ensure that they maintain favorable economics for producing chips. Teradyne utilizes best practices and workflows focused on designing for reliability, manufacturability and serviceability that ultimately deliver long mean times between failures (MTBF). This results in industry-leading ATE uptime and optimized system productivity that deliver meaningful improvements in Watt hours per device processed. Our testers are ready for production, and our design and manufacturing practices ensure our customers maximize the value of their capital equipment assets.
Relationships can drive industry growth and foster innovation. Semiconductor manufacturers continuously look for ways to enhance their practices and processes. At Teradyne, we seek relevant opportunities to collaborate with semiconductor manufacturers and other ecosystem partners to foster innovative solutions for our customers, while safeguarding the IP that keeps our products unique and gives us a competitive advantage.
Teradyne also participates in several industry organizations like the SEMI Semiconductor Climate Consortium (SCC) Scope 3 Working Group, the Global Automotive Advisory Council (GACC), and the Smart Data-AI Industry Advisory Council (IAC), to have a voice in setting the evolving standards for the semiconductor industry. We also work closely with our ecosystem of partners to better understand their needs and the general market trends, so we can anticipate future requirements as they evolve.
Industry players that foster partnerships within the semiconductor ecosystem drive the development of solutions and practices that benefit all stakeholders, and Teradyne is proud to be a leader in this space.
By focusing on the six pillars of sustainability, Teradyne enables customers to achieve their productivity, operational resilience, sustainability, and financial goals.
Teradyne’s product platforms, such as UltraFLEXplus, exemplify how flexibility drives efficiency and sustainability. These testers are designed to adapt to changing product mixes and manufacturing processes. As customer needs evolve, the ability to reconfigure the tester, enable/disable specific instruments or features, and adjust test processes ensures that resources are allocated effectively, thereby minimizing waste and maximizing throughput.
In semiconductor manufacturing, floor space is a valuable resource, and building new fabs involves significant financial and environmental costs. A test system capable of handling higher throughput or more simultaneous devices under test (DUTs) offers a more sustainable solution, with lower energy consumption per unit processed. Teradyne’s high productivity solutions achieve this by helping customers maximize output per square meter. Our high-performance testers reduce the need for extra floor space and infrastructure, saving millions in construction and operational costs while lowering the overall environmental impact.
A combination of supply chain pressures, shifting trade alignments, and rapidly evolving technology and processes in the industry are driving up the energy intensity and cost per manufactured wafer and per finished device. These pressures have led to a renewed focus on overall operational resilience, efficiency, and yield optimization. The six pillars that inform our product development roadmap and product customer support strategy demonstrate that Teradyne is a committed industry partner as we all move toward a more resilient and sustainable outcome for the industry and society.
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