ATE: The Road Ahead


Watching the ATE market is like having a front-row seat to watch the semiconductor industry's ups and downs, with none of the hype to confuse you. So 2014 was a very good market for SoC test, and it likewise a good year for SoCs. As we head into the latter half of this year and into 2016, however, a projected downturn in the mobile arena will likely put a crimp in those earnings. The prob... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


The profile of a "tech geek" is typically a male. The label itself has transitioned from a negative to a positive connotation, according to new data from Crucial.com. In fact, almost half of women (45%) identified tech entrepreneurs as the most desirable potential spouse, compared to only 5% of women who would prefer a football player for a spouse. More than one in three women want a significan... » read more

Fab Tool R&D And Ramen Noodles


The semiconductor equipment and materials industry has always been a tough business. Over the years, vendors have been under pressure to develop new technologies for a shrinking but demanding customer base. And as a result, many vendors could not keep up, or elected to exit the business, causing a massive shakeout in the industry. It isn’t getting any easier, though. Today, tool and... » read more

How To Test IoT Devices


At a recent event, test experts said the IC industry needs a new paradigm in testing chips for the [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"] (IoT). The message was fairly simple to interpret. Existing automatic test equipment (ATE) is well suited to test today’s digital, analog, and mixed-signal chips, though it may be ill-equipped or too expensive to test IoT-based devices. But wha... » read more

Programming Devices At In-Circuit Test


Manufacturers have a great deal of flexibility when deciding where and how to program their devices. Components can be programmed at many stages during the procurement and manufacturing process. This Teradyne white paper explains why in-circuit test is the ideal stage in the production line to program firmware into components or data into flash memory. Download this white paper to learn h... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


China’s Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (JCET) has made a bid to acquire STATS ChipPAC for $780 million, according to reports. This year’s top-20 chip ranking includes two pure-play foundries--TSMC and UMC--and six fabless companies, according to IC Insights. GlobalFoundries is forecast to be replaced in this year’s top 20 ranking by fabless IC supplier Nvidia, according to t... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


STMicroelectronics announced mixed results for the quarter. The company also launched a plan to cut $100 million in costs. As part of the plan, it is reviewing the implications to its process technology efforts following the recent announcements by its research alliance partners, namely IBM. STMicro is one of the main drivers of FDSOI technology. The company’s FDSOI partner is IBM, which is s... » read more

ATE Market Gets More Crowded


Over the years, the automatic test equipment (ATE) industry has undergone a dramatic shakeout. In fact, the ATE industry has shrunk from about a dozen major vendors several years ago to just three sizable companies today. There is also a smattering of smaller ATE players in the market. In other words, the big ATE vendors became bigger and the mid-sized players were gobbled up. The consol... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Jimmy Kimmel, comedian and late night host of Jimmy Kimmel Live, replaces Lily Collins (Mirror, Mirror) as McAfee’s most dangerous celebrity to search for online. Cybercriminals are looking for ways to take advantage of consumer interest around popular cultural events. These criminals capitalize on the public’s fascination with celebrities to lure them to sites laden with malware, which ena... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Is the sky falling on the ATE market? The ATE market is expected to hit $2.8 billion in 2014, up from $2.28 billion in 2013, according to Pacific Crest Securities. “Overall, we are now modeling overall semiconductor test demand to decline by 2% in 2015, a significant change from our previous estimate of up 10%,” said Weston Twigg, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, in a report. “Te... » read more

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