Advantest Partners With USI to Bring Subcontracted Testing Services to SSD Storage Market

TOKYO, JAPAN--(Marketwired - Aug 12, 2015) - Leading semiconductor test equipment supplier Advantest Corporation (TSE: 6857) (NYSE: ATE) has entered a strategic partnership with Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (USI), a member of the ASE Group of companies, to offer the first dedicated outsourced assembly and test (OSAT) services to the fast-growing market for solid-state drives (SSDs). This collaboration allows SSD manufacturers to test their designs and devices on the advanced MPT3000 test platform while minimizing up-front capital investment by outsourcing test activities to USI's factory in Shanghai, China.

"As total shipments of SSDs grow to 300 million units by 2019, according to the market research firm Gartner, Advantest is leveraging its many years of test experience and volume-manufacturing partnerships to enable the scalable subcontractor test model for the SSD industry," said Colin Ritchie, vice president of system level test at Advantest. "We look forward to collaborating with USI and our customers to help the industry achieve the impressive growth forecasts demanded by data-storage providers and users."

The availability of cost-optimized test services designed specifically for SSDs allows design companies to optimize their investments and focus their resources on product development early in their product lifecycles. Furthermore, it provides them with the pathway to quickly and easily scale up their test capacity from initial device qualification to high-volume production.

Outsourced assembly and test houses in the semiconductor industry provide a proven and highly successful business model from which the SSD industry can benefit. Many SSD vendors with NAND Flash and system-on-chip-based controller experience have worked with OSATs on other products and recognize how such partnerships help them to achieve both their engineering and production goals.

USI is a leading original design manufacturer and electronics manufacturing services (ODM/EMS) company with a wide range of electronic module and semiconductor devices. The company has extensive experience in designing, developing, manufacturing and testing SSDs. Its products include SATA, SAS and PCIe (AHCI and NVMe) SSDs shipping in high volume to both the client and enterprise markets. In Shanghai, USI operates a 65,000-square-meter factory and a SSD development center.

"As a member of the ASE Group, the world's largest semiconductor assembly and test services provider, USI offers our customers extensive technical capabilities in design, manufacturing and testing as well as scalable production volumes," said Frank Wu, senior vice president and general manager, Storage and Server Business Unit at USI. "Our capabilities include quality and reliability testing of SSDs for applications in high-growth market segments such as tablet computers, cloud computing and big data."

Advantest's MPT3000 test platform provides the most versatile and extendable SSD test solution on the market. Using downloadable firmware, the MPT3000 platform presents a single-system solution for testing SSDs with any of today's major protocol standards. This MPT3000 feature enables OSATs to achieve flexible test capacity for multiple customer applications on a single platform, optimizing test utilization and cost.

About Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. is a global ODM/EMS company providing design, miniaturization, material sourcing, manufacturing, logistics and after services for electronic devices/modules for brand owners. As a member of the ASE Group, USI was founded in 2003 and listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2012. With diversified and balanced offerings including a sales and service network in North America, Europe, Japan, China and Taiwan as well as manufacturing sites in China, Taiwan and Mexico, USI serves customers in the sectors of wireless communication, computer and storage, consumer, industrial and automotive electronics worldwide.

About Advantest Corporation
A world-class technology company, Advantest is the leading producer of automatic test equipment (ATE) for the semiconductor industry and a premier manufacturer of measuring instruments used in the design and production of electronic instruments and systems. Its leading-edge systems and products are integrated into the most advanced semiconductor production lines in the world. The company also focuses on R&D for emerging markets that benefit from advancements in nanotech and terahertz technologies, and has introduced multi-vision metrology scanning electron microscopes essential to photomask manufacturing, as well as a groundbreaking 3D imaging and analysis tools. Founded in Tokyo in 1954, Advantest established its first subsidiary in 1982, in the USA, and now has subsidiaries worldwide. More information is available at www.advantest.com.