Highlights –

  • Advantest has created the vision of an open solution ecosystem for its semiconductor manufacturing equipment platform.
  • For test floor operators, a significant burden of providing IT infrastructure for test data management will be lifted.

Leading semiconductor test equipment supplier Advantest Corporation and Synopsys, a leading provider of EDA software and data analytics solutions for the semiconductor environment, have collaborated to enable real-time data analytics in the latter’s SiliconDash with the former’s new ACS Nexus solution.

ACS Nexus is a real-time data streaming infrastructure that allows access to aggregated data streams of multiple test cells with the help of a central, standardized software interface available on-premises. The firm is tightly integrated into Advantest equipment platforms, delivering enhanced real-time analytics performance.

The semiconductor industry must realize the highest possible quality while achieving stable yield maximums as quickly as possible. Technologies like 5G, 3D/2.5D heterogenous packaging and IC design, and the further diversification of Application-Specific ICs (ASICs) have called upon the need to innovative and software-driven approaches to semiconductor tests.

To enable these approaches, as part of its Grand Design Strategy, Advantest has created the vision of an open solution ecosystem for its semiconductor manufacturing equipment platform. Here, Advantest teams, customers, and third parties can develop data analytics solutions and advanced machine learning abilities.

With this, customers and partners will have access to a single centrally provided interface to collect test data in a reliable, secure, and standardized way only after getting permission control by data owners. Expanding the existing data logging capabilities through the software-defined interface will allow data analytics providers and customers to improve their advanced analytics capabilities and help achieve the desired quality with the highest attainable yield.

For test floor operators, a significant burden of providing IT infrastructure for test data management will be lifted, thus leading to improved security and reliability of test floor operations and thus Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE).

Currently, ACS Nexus will be available to all the customers, and third parties on the V93000 & T2000 ATE platform. In the future, it has plans to move to other Advantest platforms within the next year.

Experts’ view

“Enabling this capability today for our ecosystem customers and partners unlocks the industry’s creative capacity to develop the most powerful and advanced solutions for the future of semiconductor test,” said Michael Chang, vice president, ACS, with Advantest.

“Collaborating with Advantest to enable the real-time-enabled version of SiliconDash leverages our companies’ key strengths. Combining ACS Nexus with SiliconDash will allow our joint customers to realize their full potential,” said Amit Sanghani, Synopsys’ senior vice president, test.