FormFactor ships 125th DRAM wafer probe card with advanced TRE technology

LIVERMORE, USA: FormFactor Inc. announced that it has reached a milestone with the shipment of the 125th wafer probe card incorporating the company's proprietary advanced TRE technology.

Advanced TRE technology enables FormFactor's probe cards to make more efficient use of tester channels on test equipment to multiply the number of devices that can be tested simultaneously on a wafer with existing resources. As a result, probe cards incorporating FormFactor's advanced TRE technology can extend the life of existing test equipment, allowing semiconductor manufacturers to defer the cost of purchasing new equipment while still addressing increases in test capacity or new test requirements.

FormFactor has shipped probe cards with advanced TRE technology to several of the top DRAM manufacturers, and are currently being used to test DDR2 and DDR3 DRAM devices with densities ranging from 512MB to 2GB. The production-proven technology brings a new degree of intelligence to FormFactor wafer probe cards through the integration of application specific ICs. With this proprietary capability, FormFactor's advanced TRE enabled probe cards take wafer test parallelism to the next level.

"As DRAM manufacturers drive to smaller technology nodes to lower their production costs, the number of DRAM devices being produced and tested per wafer continues to rise. As a result, our customers need innovative solutions to lower their test costs while maintaining test quality," stated Stefan Zschiegner, senior vice president and general manager of FormFactor's DRAM Product Business Group.

"By enabling higher levels of test parallelism, FormFactor's wafer probe cards with advanced TRE technology can lower the cost of test by up to 30 percent or more, as well as help customers avoid millions of dollars in capital expenditure by extending the life of their existing testers -- all without compromising on test coverage and yield."