E5620 DR-SEM for Review and Classification of Ultra-Small Photomask Defects Unveiled

In December 2022, Advantest unveiled the E5620 Defect Review Scanning Electron Microscope (DR-SEM), its newest mask SEM product for reviewing and classifying ultra-small defects on photomasks and mask blanks. With its high-accuracy, high-throughput defect review capability, the E5620 DR-SEM is expected to contribute appreciably to production quality improvements in next-generation photomasks and shorter mask manufacturing turnaround times.

Like its predecessor, the E5620 implements Advantest’s highly stable image capture technology to easily import defect location data from mask inspection systems and automatically image the locations. The system has a number of improvements that specifically target future mask requirements.

“In working with our customers to determine their requirements for future EUV photomask inspection and analysis, we identified several essential advancements to integrate into our proven DR-SEM system,” said Toshimichi Iwai, senior VP of the Nanotechnology Business Group with Advantest. “With the E5620, our team of lithography experts has created a superior tool that can handle today’s photomasks and is truly future-ready for the coming EUV generation.”

Advantest Adds System-Level Testing Capability for Advanced Memory ICs

Advantest installed its first enhanced T5851-STM16G tester capable of nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) system-level test coverage at a major manufacturer of IC memory devices. By expanding the capabilities of its established T5851 platform, Advantest addresses the growing market for testing NVMe solid-state drives (SSDs) using ball-grid arrays (BGAs) in automotive applications.

Over the next five years, the automotive market is expected to become the largest consumer of semiconductor devices. This growth is escalating demand for NVMe BGA SSD devices, which are crucial in advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). To develop and economically mass produce these key NAND Flash SSD devices, memory manufacturers worldwide need a highly reliable, cost-efficient test solution.

Designed to perform system-level testing of NVMe BGA SSDs, the T5851-STM16G tester is ideally suited for evaluating any generation of BGA SSDs in either an engineering environment or a high-volume production site. The highly versatile platform can handle devices with multiple protocols, including NVMe, UFS and PCIe, at speeds up to 16 Gbps. The system’s modular, tester-per-DUT architecture supports test flows required for system-level testing of up to 768 devices simultaneously. 

Advantest is taking orders for the T5851-STM16G tester. It is available either as a new tester from Advantest’s factory or as a cost-effective enhancement to users’ existing T5851 or even T583X units.

Advantest Introduces Industry’s First Flexible DUT Interface 

Advantest launched its DUT Scale Duo interface for the V93000 EXA Scale SoC test systems, enabling the industry’s highest level of parallelism for testing advanced semiconductors. With this revolutionary interface, the usable space on DUT boards and probe cards is increased by 50 percent or more while wafer probe and final-test setups can accommodate component heights that are more than three times taller.

Advantest offers the industry’s first DUT interface with the capability to adapt either to the existing standard DUT board or probe card size or to switch to the new, significantly larger size. Using a unique sliding mechanism, users can effortlessly switch back and forth between both formats to adapt to specific application requirements.

Along with the new interface, a new super-stiff extended bridge achieves superior deflection performance in direct-probing setups. The unit’s universal design gives it the versatility to support a wide range of applications including digital and RF device testing. With its sophisticated sensing capabilities, the extended bridge delivers the industry’s best planarity and high manufacturing yield, ensuring highly accurate positioning and verification of probe card clamping.

“Our new DUT Scale Duo enables the next stepping in parallelism while embodying Advantest’s continuing emphasis on system compatibility by allowing users to utilize their existing DUT boards and probe cards with a new interface,” said Advantest’s General Manager and EVP, Jürgen Serrer. “In addition to protecting customers’ investments, our approach to delivering the most efficient test solutions also offers flexibility and simplifies fleet management on the test floor.”

Advantest Enables PCIe Gen 5 NVMe & CXL Device Testing on Proven MPT3000 SSD Test Systems

Advantest announced that its MPT3000 solid-state drive (SSD) test systems are the industry’s first with the ability to test PCI Express fifth-generation (PCIe Gen 5) devices, including those utilizing the new Compute Express Link™ (CXL™) interconnect standard. To help drive product introduction, qualification, and volume production demands associated with PCIe Gen 5 NVMe & CXL devices, several leading memory device makers have purchased multiple MPT3000 products, including MPT3000ES engineering systems, MPT3000HVM high-volume manufacturing testers and device interface boards.

PCIe Gen 5 enables high-speed data transmission—essential for data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), and 5G applications. CXL is an open industry standard memory interconnect that builds on the physical and electrical interfaces of PCI Gen 5 to provide high-performance connections across memory types. 

Advantest designed its flexible MPT3000 systems to meet testing needs for enterprise and client SSDs, helping shorten customers’ time-to-market. In addition to CXL test, key MPT3000 capabilities include testing up to 32 Gbps, increased sideband and high-speed support, and improved temperature management for high-wattage drives.

“We are committed to driving memory and storage test innovation by developing the first systems and boards that will enable testing for both PCIe Gen 5 CXL and NVMe SSDs,” said Indira Joshi, vice president, SSD Test Division, Advantest America. “By expanding our proven MPT3000 system’s capabilities to address PCIe Gen 5 CXL, we are well positioned also to expand our relationships with important customers in the memory market.”

New TAS74000TS Measurement Solution Enables Materials Characterization for Beyond 5G

Advantest introduced a high frequency resolution option for its TAS7400TS terahertz optical sampling analysis system. It features excellent cost performance and ease of operation, and a new option that provides a groundbreaking measurement method for high-frequency characteristic evaluation of radio wave absorbers and base materials, which are indispensable for Beyond 5G / 6G next-generation communications technology and for the millimeter-wave radar technology used in ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems). 

Vector network analyzers (VNAs) have been widely used to evaluate the transmission characteristics (transmittance, reflectance) and complex permittivity of various materials in the millimeter-wave and high-frequency regions. But in recent years, it has become important to evaluate these characteristics over wider bandwidths, raising issues with VNAs on account of the time and effort required to set and calibrate each frequency band.

Advantest’s terahertz optical sampling system addresses these issues by enabling batch measurement over a wide band, utilizing pulsed electromagnetic waves. Measurements are now possible with a compact optical sampling system (measurement environment), saving on cost and space. It is also possible to analyze surface frequency characteristics with the mapping measurement option. Furthermore, the frequency resolution and scan speed of the new option are 5x that of the previous product, making this an optimal solution for evaluating the high frequency characteristics of new materials.

The solution will be exhibited at JASIS, from November 8th to 10th, and at MWE 2021, from November 24th to 26th.

Advantest Cloud Solutions

An Open Solutions Ecosystem for an Integrated Semiconductor Supply Chain  

Today’s semiconductor manufacturers face continual market pressures to design and produce increasingly intricate and complex ICs.

The traditionally used manual approaches for achieving and maintaining high yields are both time-consuming and expensive. As the complexity of chips increases, these traditional methods are becoming cost-prohibitive and less and less suitable for managing the data explosion in semiconductor manufacturing. At the same time, semiconductor manufacturers struggle to realize value from the data they collect.

To master this challenge, being able to integrate all data sources across the entire IC manufacturing supply chain is the most essential strategy. When combined with advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities, future-proof, real-time automated production control is in reach.

The Advantest Cloud Solutions^™(ACS) ecosystem helps customers accomplish intelligent data-driven workflows. The ACS ecosystem is a family of cloud-based products and technologies based on a single scalable data platform that allows customers to develop or procure market-leading solutions from Advantest and its partners. Automatically turning insights into automated production-control actions in real-time based on machine learning algorithms becomes possible in an easy to use and accessible way across the entire Advantest equipment portfolio.

This new ACS ecosystem enables customers to boost quality, yield, and operational efficiencies, and to accelerate product development and new product introductions for years to come.

Customer-driven products and services for integrated workflows

By building scalable products and offering complementary services aligned with customer needs, we ensure a thorough product-market fit. 

The ACS products and services enable customers to get more value out of their supply chain with focused workflow solutions for each stage of the IC design and manufacturing process, including:

• machine learning powered post-silicon-validation
• dynamic parametric test
• high-performance edge compute
• cloud-based test-program development and debug
• test equipment fleet monitoring
• predictive maintenance and OEE management. 

With test equipment and solution-driven ACS roadmaps closely integrated, Advantest is one of the only vendors capable of delivering a fully integrated test solution ecosystem. 

Best-in-class technology infrastructure for an end-to-end integrated supply chain

Advantest’s ACS Technology Platform, which powers all ACS Products & Services, is built upon PDF Solutions’ big data analytics platform, Exensio^®.  

The unique partnership between PDF Solutions Inc., a leading provider of advanced data analytics solutions, and Advantest Corporation, the world’s leading semiconductor test equipment supplier, enables a superior integration of the PDF Solutions Exensio^® platform with Advantest test equipment. 

The ACS Technology Platform is a highly secure and extendable platform consisting of a cloud-based data lake combined with powerful big data analytics to achieve unrivalled computing power, whenever and wherever needed. Customers can now “correlate anything to anything” across all IC test and equipment data throughout all stages of the IC development and manufacturing process to search for signatures that could not previously be seen or identified, all built in and verified to work with Advantest equipment. With these capabilities, new levels of actionable insights can be turned into long-lasting competitive advantages.