FREMONT, Calif., April 27, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aehr Test Systems (Nasdaq:AEHR), a worldwide supplier of semiconductor test and burn-in equipment, today announced it has received an order from a new customer for a FOX-15 Multi-Wafer Test and Burn-In System, multiple WaferPak™ contactors and a WaferPak Aligner. The order is for more than $6 million and is for a production test and burn-in application. The order includes prepayments in order to lock in lead times and volume-related discounts and is expected to ship within the next six months.
"We are very excited to announce our initial order from this major new customer," said Gayn Erickson, President and CEO of Aehr Test Systems. "This production customer is extremely quality and cost conscious, which makes them a great match for the reliability and yield improvements that our wafer level burn-in and test solutions provide."
"We see the markets for automotive sensors and infotainment, mobile consumer electronic devices, servers with high-reliability stacked flash memory, and ultimately the Internet of Things (IoT), as key growth opportunities for Aehr Test's wafer level test and burn-in solutions," said Carl Buck, Aehr Test Vice President of Marketing. "Aehr Test currently has an installed base of customers using our FOX-15 multi-wafer test systems in the automotive sensor and data communications spaces with systems configured to test and burn-in 15 wafers in parallel in high volume production today. This new customer's production application represents a significant opportunity for Aehr Test as we expand our unique and highly cost effective wafer level test and burn-in solution into the rapidly growing automotive, consumer, mobile, and computing markets."
Buck continued, "Extensive test and burn-in is required to weed out early-life failures to meet the standards of automotive and quality conscious consumer, server, and mobile device manufacturers. The challenge is how to handle these devices, which are often extremely small, measuring in the one to few millimeters in size and having thousands or even tens of thousands of devices per wafer. Contacting the devices in package form is often both impractical and expensive. Aehr Test provides a unique solution to contact and test all of the devices at once in wafer form. Today, we test wafers with up to 20,000 devices at a time and can do this at elevated temperatures up to 170C with our proprietary WaferPak contactors. Typical packaged part burn-in systems can only go to 150C and typical wafer probe cards used in production today may only go up to 125C. Aehr Test can make contact with the very small contact pads that are often under 100 microns wide (less than four one-thousandths of an inch) and 200 microns apart from each other versus typical pads on surface mount package parts with 300 microns wide pads that are 1,000 microns apart. Our customers have shown that handling and burning-in their devices in wafer form is much more reliable and leads to higher quality and lower defect rates in the end products. Our FOX-15 multi-wafer burn-in system can burn-in 15 wafers at once, allowing customers to test thousands of devices on each of the 15 wafers in parallel, providing them with a very low cost platform for doing test and burn-in of their wafers."
Aehr Test's FOX family of products is focused on high reliability test needs and long-duration full wafer burn-in and test of products such as sensors, automotive ICs, discrete memories, and devices with embedded memories including microcontrollers and smart card devices. The FOX-1 system offers high-throughput single-touchdown sort testing. The FOX-15 system has a capacity of up to 15 WaferPak single-touchdown full wafer contactors for burn-in and test of state-of-the-art integrated circuits and sensors. Testing the ICs in wafer form before they are assembled into multi-die stacked packages enables the stacked packages to then be used for high reliability and quality applications such as enterprise solid state drives, automotive devices, mission critical integrated circuits and sensors. Aehr Test's recently-introduced FOX-1P system extends the capabilities of its FOX-1 system by adding high density, low cost I/O and DPS modules with the capability to provide over 16,000 I/O or DPS channels in a single test head for massive parallelism on a single wafer.
About Aehr Test Systems
Headquartered in Fremont, California, Aehr Test Systems is a worldwide provider of test systems for burning-in and testing logic and memory integrated circuits and has an installed base of more than 2,500 systems worldwide. Increased quality and reliability needs of the Automotive and Mobility integrated circuit markets are driving additional test requirements, capacity needs and opportunities for Aehr Test products in package and wafer level test. Aehr Test has developed and introduced several innovative products, including the ABTSTM and FOX families of test and burn-in systems and the DiePak® carrier. The ABTS system is used in production and qualification testing of packaged parts for both low-power and high-power logic as well as all common types of memory devices. The FOX system is a full wafer contact test and burn-in system used for burn-in and functional test of complex devices, such as leading-edge memories, digital signal processors, microprocessors, microcontrollers and systems-on-a-chip. The DiePak carrier is a reusable, temporary package that enables IC manufacturers to perform cost-effective final test and burn-in of bare die. For more information, please visit Aehr Test's website at www.aehr.com.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to Aehr Test as of the date hereof and actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied due to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Aehr Test's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the FOX products, including statements regarding future market opportunities and conditions, expected product shipment dates and customer orders or commitments. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, acceptance by customers of the FOX and WaferPak contactor technologies, acceptance by customers of the FOX system, WaferPak Aligner and WaferPak contactors shipped upon receipt of a purchase order and the ability of new products to meet customer needs or perform as described, as well as general market conditions, customer demand and acceptance of Aehr Test's products and Aehr Test's ability to execute on its business strategy. See Aehr Test's recent 10-K, 10-Q and other reports from time to time filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed description of the risks facing Aehr Test's business. Aehr Test disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this press release.
Aehr Test Systems Carl Buck V.P. of Marketing (510) 623-9400 x381 MKR Group Inc. Todd Kehrli or Jim Byers Analyst/Investor Contact (323) 468-2300
