Open architecture in question: ATE vendors give mixed reviews to test consortium kickoff - News - Automated test equipment; Semicon West 2002 trade show report

Electronic News, July 22, 2002 by Jeff Chappell

SAN JOSE--Cautious, leery Optimism, a slow and bumpy recovery, a skeptical and jittery Wall Street, and a push for open-architecture test equipment--welcome to Semicon West 2002, Final Manufacturing.

Although no final figures are available, some 50,000 people were preregistered to attend the backend portion of the show here last week. This would make it comparable to last year. Several of the larger automated test equipment (ATE) companies reported that booth traffic was up compared to last year, although it is still down compared to past Semicons.

In the midst of the slew of tester and test-related product introductions, one of the biggest announcements to come out of Semicon West was the birth of the Semiconductor Test Consortium (STC). The consortium's stated goal is to develop an open-architecture ATE platform to overcome the challenges of testing increasingly complex devices such as SOC applications and the proliferation of various test platforms.

Agilent Technologies Inc. and Credence Systems Corp. didn't dismiss the idea of an open-architecture ATE system, but their reaction was cool at best.

The latest incarnation of this idea comes from Intel Corp. and is spearheaded by Japanese ATE giant Advantest Corp. While the consortium has only three official members currently--Intel, Advan test and National Instruments Corp. -- other ATE and chip vendors are involved, and their involvement will be made public in the near future, Advantest said. But apparently none of the other big-iron ATE vendors are on board at the moment.

STC wants to develop a standard open architecture or backbone for ATE with standard sockets for which ATE vendors would develop specific modules for various applications. It would lower costs throughout the supply chain, not just for chipmakers, according to STC.

Intel said its goal is to leverage test infrastructure across various steps and applications, so it doesn't need a high level of expertise to cover every particular variation of logic IC testing. As those ICs become more and more complex, the current model of test is no longer proving viable for chipmakers, said Navid Shahriari, test equipment and applications manager for Intel.

The general consensus at Semicon West was that the industry is climbing off the bottom, albeit slipping and sliding along the way, even as Wall Street reacted negatively to initial quarterly earnings reports. Still, the industry seems to have given up hope for a second-half recovery, which now seems likely in 2003.

While 2002 will still be a year of negative growth for equipment markets, according to Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), there are signs of life. "We are seeing year-over-year improvements in orders, which is a positive sign," said Elizabeth Schumann, senior director of marketing and research for SEMI.

SEMI estimates that equipment billings totaled $4.2 billion in Q2, while bookings will total $5.7 billion. That would be a 35 percent sequential quarterly improvement, Schumann observed.

SEMI predicts sequential quarter-Over-quarter improvements in orders will lead to a return to positive growth in 2003. But many here seem to think that at least a somewhat limited recovery has begun.

"The forecasting has been pretty bad and this has been driven by consumer confidence," said Art Zafiropoulo, chairman and CEO of Ultratech Steppper. While the recovery has begun, it's going to be slow and gradual, hampered by eroding consumer and investor confidence, Zafiropoulo said. "I don't think we'll see a sharp recovery until the end of next year," he added.