Company Profile

We are a worldwide leader in the design, development and manufacture of advanced wafer probing solutions for the electrical measurement and test of semiconductor integrated circuits and chips. Our customers use our products to perform testing of chips while in wafer form, or wafer probing, in both engineering and production test environments. Our engineering probe stations and analytical probes are used in research and development to perform precise electrical measurements, or electrical metrology, on increasingly complex and high speed chips in order to assure quality and reliability, reduce costly redesigns, accelerate time-to-market and improve chip fabrication processes. We derive a large majority of our revenue from the sale of our engineering probe stations. Our production probe cards reduce manufacturing costs of complex and high speed chips by identifying defective chips early in the process and by testing multiple chips concurrently.

Each of the 20 largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world, in terms of revenue, is one of our more than 800 customers. Our major customers are Agilent Technologies, IBM, Intel, Micron Technology, NEC, Sony, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Texas Instruments. These customers use our probing solutions to perform engineering and production testing of a wide variety of chips, including radio frequency chips, digital signal processors, telecommunications chips, advanced memory chips, microprocessors, microcontrollers, graphics processors and application specific integrated circuits.

During the last decade, growth in the computer, telecommunications, consumer and industrial electronics markets has increased demand for advanced chips. The Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that worldwide semiconductor sales totaled $227 billion in 2005 and are expected to grow to $309 billion in 2008. In order to increase the speed and decrease the cost of chips, semiconductor manufacturers have continuously pursued advancements in manufacturing technologies, including the use of smaller chip elements, new materials and larger 300mm wafers. These advancements in chip manufacturing have led to increasing challenges in the design, production and test of chips.

Goals

Our goals are to expand our market leadership position in probing solutions for engineering tests and to become a leading provider of test products that are routinely replaced in chip production testing, referred to as test consumables. Our strategies to achieve these goals are to continue to expand market share by leveraging our customer relationships and strategic alliances, to develop next-generation technologies and to expand end-market opportunities to grow sales of consumables and services.