ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控) yesterday launched its second testing facility in San Jose, California, to expand advanced chip testing capacity such as burn-in testing to satisfy customers’ rising engineering needs for emerging semiconductor applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC).
ISE Labs Inc, a fully owned subsidiary of ASE, would operate the advanced testing facility.
When added to its first facility in nearby Fremont, ISE would double its available research-and-development lab and business space to 150,000m2 in hopes of boosting the US semiconductor supply chain, the company said in a statement.
Photo courtesy of ASE Technology Holding Co
“As the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain reshoring continues to escalate, demand for our proven engineering expertise is growing in parallel,” ISE Labs chief executive officer Kenneth Hsiang (項世傑) said in the statement.
“Expanding our operations by adding a second facility is vital to support our growing customers, who are onsite daily due to the collaborative nature of our work,” Hsiang said. “Ease of access in the South [San Francisco] Bay was a key consideration in selecting our new site.”
Numerous customers are working on solutions for AI, machine learning, advanced driver assistance systems and HPC, the statement said.
ISE Labs has spent about US$500 million in the company's US labs and hired more than 200 local employees, company president Jui Ko said. The company expected to invest about US$200 million in the San Jose facility over time in accordance with customers' demand, Ko said.
The San Jose facility would primarily house qualification and reliability processes, including environmental, mechanical, electrostatic discharge, failure analysis, and chip burn-in testing, the statement said.
ISE Labs’ high-power burn-in solutions — vital to detecting early failures in a semiconductor device — are among the best and highest-performing in the industry, it said.
The Fremont site would expand its already robust set of test functions, including automated test equipment program development, test hardware design, device characterization, wafer probing, engineering, pre-production and final testing, and system-level testing, it said.
ASE in April increased its capital spending for the second time, boosting its budget by 10 percent from an earlier estimate of US$2.1 billion to cope with growing demand.
As part of the budget adjustments, the Kaohsiung-based company also planned to allocate a bigger slice of the budget, about 24 percent, for chip testing business from an original estimate of 18 percent to get more non-turnkey solutions business.
ASE is also scouting potential sites to deploy advanced chip packaging capacity in the US, Japan and Mexico, in response to rising demand for improved supply chain resilience amid mounting geopolitical risks, the company said last month.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) secured a record 70.2 percent share of the global foundry business in the second quarter, up from 67.6 percent the previous quarter, and continued widening its lead over second-placed Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Monday. TSMC posted US$30.24 billion in sales in the April-to-June period, up 18.5 percent from the previous quarter, driven by major smartphone customers entering their ramp-up cycle and robust demand for artificial intelligence chips, laptops and PCs, which boosted wafer shipments and average selling prices, TrendForce said in a report. Samsung’s sales also grew in the second quarter, up
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump weighed in on a pressing national issue: The rebranding of a restaurant chain. Last week, Cracker Barrel, a Tennessee company whose nationwide locations lean heavily on a cozy, old-timey aesthetic — “rocking chairs on the porch, a warm fire in the hearth, peg games on the table” — announced it was updating its logo. Uncle Herschel, the man who once appeared next to the letters with a barrel, was gone. It sparked ire on the right, with Donald Trump Jr leading a charge against the rebranding: “WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?!” Later, Trump Sr weighed
LIMITED IMPACT: Investor confidence was likely sustained by its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as only less advanced chips are made in Nanjing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) saw its stock price close steady yesterday in a sign that the loss of the validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing, China, fab should have a mild impact on the world’s biggest contract chipmaker financially and technologically. Media reports about the waiver loss sent TSMC down 1.29 percent during the early trading session yesterday, but the stock soon regained strength and ended at NT$1,160, unchanged from Tuesday. Investors’ confidence in TSMC was likely built on its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as Chinese customers contributed about 9 percent to TSMC’s revenue last
LOOPHOLES: The move is to end a break that was aiding foreign producers without any similar benefit for US manufacturers, the US Department of Commerce said US President Donald Trump’s administration would make it harder for Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc to ship critical equipment to their chipmaking operations in China, dealing a potential blow to the companies’ production in the world’s largest semiconductor market. The US Department of Commerce in a notice published on Friday said that it was revoking waivers for Samsung and SK Hynix to use US technologies in their Chinese operations. The companies had been operating in China under regulations that allow them to import chipmaking equipment without applying for a new license each time. The move would revise what is known
RSS