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LatestNews
Leading semiconductor test
equipment supplier Advantest
Corporation (TSE: 6857) earned
a Best of Show Award with its
T5851 tester at the 11th Annual
Flash Memory Summit, held
August 9-11 in Santa Clara,
Calif. The awards presented at
the summit provide the highest
honors in the flash memory and
solid-state storage industry.
In the category of Most
Innovative Flash Memory Technology, Advantest’s T5851
system was recognized for changing the way flash
memory is tested to improve the performance, availability,
endurance and/or energy efficiencies of electronic products.
The T5851 provides multi-protocol support in one tool for
high-performance universal flash storage (UFS) devices
and PCIe BGA solid-state drives, minimizing customers’
capital investments and deployment risks. Its tester-per-
DUT architecture and proprietary hardware accelerator
deliver the fastest test times in the industry, contributing to
a lower cost of test.
The T5851 is designed for high-volume testing, as well
as reliability and qualification testing, of protocol NAND
devices. This flexible system can be configured to test up
ready. “All the components were designed from the start
to be easily mass produced,” says Mathieu Ackermann, the
company’s CTO. The startup’s three young founders are EPFL
alumni who all worked in industry before creating their own
startup. They began by fleshing out their idea in their spare
time before setting up their company. “Working in industry
gave us what we needed to reach our goal, which was to
develop solar panels that could be rapidly brought to market
at a competitive price.”
The founders are convinced that their solar panels will lower
the price per kWh paid by consumers. The system will probably
be a little more expensive to buy, “but this will be quickly
offset by the additional energy that will be generated,” says
Florian Gerlich, COO. “The price of solar panels has dropped
sharply in recent years, but not enough to produce electricity
Advantest’s T5851 Tester Wins Best of Show Award at Flash
Memory Summit
to 768 devices in parallel by using
an automated component handler
such as Advantest’s M6242
system.
“We are proud to receive this
industry acknowledgment of the
innovative advances that we bring
to the market for non-volatile
memories, which are so vital to
low-power, mobile applications,”
said Masuhiro Yamada, executive
officer with Advantest. “Our T5851 system is designed for
system-level testing of these devices while still providing
the reliability, low-cost and high-volume productivity that
the market needs.”
“The booming market for new consumer electronics utilizing
flash storage creates the challenge for a scalable platform
for testing flash memory,” said Jay Kramer, chairperson
of the Flash Memory Summit’s Awards Program. “We are
proud to select Advantest’s T5851 for the Best of Show
Technology Innovation Award as it is available in both
production and engineering models to address a wide
range of test program environments while providing the
versatility to test the memory ICs powering smart phones,
tablets and ultra-portable laptops.”
at a competitive cost,” he says. “For residential systems, solar
panels accounted for less than 20% of total installation costs
in the United States in 2015. Even if the solar panels were
free, this would not always offset the system’s cost. Currently,
most of the margin earned by solar energy developers comes
from subsidies. Yet these subsidies are declining.”
By combining efficiency and ease of installation, the founders
of the startup hope to shake things up by making photovoltaic
systems competitive with fossil energies. “Insolight has
designed a highly innovative system, and these initial
prototypes show an impressive yield in external assessments,”
says Christophe Ballif, Director of EPFL’s Photovoltaics
Laboratory. “They now need to test the limits of their concept,
show how a commercial-sized system can perform, and prove
the product’s economic potential.”
14 l New-Tech Magazine Europe