16 Jul 03Cascade Microtech Announces Production Availability of Consumer RF Pyramid Probe® Cards for Functional Manufacturing Wafer Test

New technology significantly increases quality, yield, and throughput of consumer RF devices – even enabling more die per wafer

Cascade Microtech, Beaverton, OR (July 16, 2003) – Cascade Microtech, Inc., a leading supplier of probes, test stations and accessories for semiconductor wafer-testing, announced today the production availability of its family of high-performance, fine-pitch Consumer RF Pyramid Probe Cards for in-line manufacturing. Consumer RF semiconductors are used in many familiar applications such as cell phones, WiFi, Blue-tooth, and wireless local-area networks.

The product line, customizable for individual wafer/device types, has demonstrated significant benefits to its semiconductor manufacturing adopters. These include the ability to increase value to their customers (and their own device average selling prices) by offering Known-Good-Die (KGD). KGD can bring a price premium of up to 5 times that of a packaged part. Additionally, the increased reliability and signal integrity of the probe card design over alternative approaches improves the accuracy of testing, resulting in higher device yields, more repeatable and reliable test results, lower maintenance costs, and higher tester ROI.

Customers implementing this production capability have documented excellent results, including package yield improvements of up to 35%, test probe life-cycle increases of anywhere from 2:1 to 5:1 compared to traditional needle probes and overall test cost reductions of over 6%. Cascade’s Pyramid Probes have been proven in installations in the majority of the major RF device manufacturers worldwide.

Bruce McFadden, President and COO of Cascade says, “We believe that our patented Pyramid Probe capability will be a key enabler and catalyst for accelerating the diffusion of affordable RF device capability worldwide… and it’s enabling and accelerating that kind of technological capability that can create meaningful social and economic benefit for many.”

Typical manufacturing implementation of Pyramid probe testing takes roughly 6 weeks and comprises a custom probe card design and on-site check out cycle. Pyramid Probe Cards are proven to work with Teradyne, Agilent, LTX, Credence, and Roos in-line wafer testers