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Advantest Corporation (株式会社アドバンテスト^?) (NYSE: ATE, TYO: 6857) is a leading manufacturer of automatic test equipment (ATE) for the semiconductor industry, and a manufacturer of measuring instruments used in the design, production and maintenance of electronic systems including fiber optic and wireless communications equipment and digital consumer products. Based in Tokyo, Advantest is a producer of semiconductor test systems for memory semiconductors, claiming a more than 50 percent market share^{[citation needed]}, and a leading supplier of test systems to the fast growing SoC segment with 20% of the market^{[citation needed]}. For the year ended March 31, 2009, the company reported a loss of ¥74.9 billion on revenues of ¥76.7 billion (US$780 million).^[1] For the year ending March 31, 2010, the company lost ¥11.5 billion on revenues of ¥53.2 billion.^[2]

Company Logo of Advantest

Advantest Kitakyushu R&D Center

For 21 consecutive years, Advantest has been ranked among VLSI Research’s 10 BEST semiconductor equipment companies.^[3] This ranking is based on customer satisfaction in terms of technical leadership, product performance, process and software support, and service.^[4] In SoC test, Advantest achieved the industry’s highest rating in cost-of-ownership, while in memory test, the company led the industry with the highest rating in the categories of uptime and usable throughput^{[citation needed]}.

History[link]

Advantest was founded in Japan in 1954 as Takeda Riken Industry Co., Ltd., and was a maker of electronic measuring instruments. The company entered the semiconductor testing business in 1972, began trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1983 and changed its name to Advantest Corporation in 1985^[5] The company’s stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 2001.

Expanding its semiconductor test business, Advantest established its North American subsidiary, Advantest America, in 1982, and its European operations in Munich in 1983, to locate its sales and service operations closer to its North American and European customers. The company also has subsidiaries throughout Asia, operates in 13 countries and currently has approximately 3,500 employees worldwide.

In 2002, Advantest was one of the founding member companies that established the Semiconductor Test Consortium (STC)—the first international, industry-wide collaboration aimed at developing a highly scalable, flexible test platform to reduce the cost of test of SoCs and other advanced ICs that incorporate complex technologies such as copper interconnects, sub-100 nm device geometries and 300mm wafers.

Products[link]

Advantest has three reportable segments of business: semiconductor and component test systems; mechatronics (handlers); and services, support and others.

Semiconductor and Component Test System Segment[link]

Automatic test equipment is used to verify that a semiconductor functions properly during and after the semiconductor manufacturing process. Advantest is the only automatic test equipment company that manufactures complete test solutions consisting of test systems, test handlers, device interfaces and software. Test systems are available for testing system-on-chip (SoC) and memory devices. Test handlers are used to load and unload mass-produced chips from test systems, and to sort the chips by quality. Advantest’s test handlers are capable of working with other manufacturers’ semiconductor test systems. Advantest develops device interfaces that can be integrated into existing automatic test equipment, which lower the cost to manufacturers associated with varying product lines. Advantest also offers products used in the design, production and maintenance of electronic systems, including fiber optic and wireless communications equipment and digital consumer products. The customers are electronic equipment and products manufacturers and communications network operators.

Electronic measuring instruments are essential in the development of next-generation wireless and fiber optic networks, as well as a wide variety of consumer and industrial electronics – everything from DVDs to aviation equipment. For example, Advantest manufactures optical spectrum analyzers, which measure wavelengths and levels of optical signals transmitted through wavelength division multiplex (WDM) transmission systems. In 2002, Advantest introduced a new measuring instrument architecture—the Wizard of Module Test (WMT), which enables customers to add and modify functions at a lower cost of ownership. This architecture allows data to be exchanged quickly and makes it possible to control multiple measurement functions simultaneously using a single software program.

In FY2008, net sales reached ¥76.7 billion or approximately US$780 million. Of the three reportable business segments, automatic test equipment is Advantest’s most significant. Overseas sales as a percentage of total sales remains at approximately 70%.^[6]

References[link]

1. ^ Advantest FY2008 Consolidated Financial Results dated April 27, 2009
2. ^ Advantest Presentation Material "Fiscal 2009 Consolidated Financial Results" updated
3. ^ VLSI Research 2006 Top Ten Equipment Suppliers to the Semiconductor Industry
4. ^ VLSI Research 10 BEST 2006
5. ^ Business Tokyo (Tokyo: Keizaikai Co.) 1 (1): 34, 1987, ISSN 0914-0026, OCLC 15641679 
6. ^ Corporate Background June 2009 Amy Gold Author

External links[link]

• (English) Advantest
• (Japanese) Advantest Japan

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