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.
The domestic unit of the Chinese-owned, Dutch-headquartered chipmaker Nexperia BV will soon be able to produce semiconductors locally within China, according to two company sources. Nexperia is at the center of a global tug-of-war over critical semiconductor technology, with a Dutch court in February ordering a probe into alleged mismanagement at the company. The geopolitical tussle has disrupted supply chains, with some carmakers reportedly forced to cut production due to chip shortages. Local production would allow Nexperia’s domestic arm, Nexperia Semiconductors (China) Ltd (安世半導體中國), to bypass restrictions in place since October on the supply of silicon wafers — etched with tiny components to
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday received government approval to deploy its advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process at its second fab currently under construction in Japan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a news release. The ministry green-lit the plan for the facility in Kumamoto, which is scheduled to start installing equipment and come online in 2028 with a monthly production capacity of 15,000 12-inch wafers, the ministry said. The Department of Investment Review in June 2024 authorized a US$5.26 billion investment for the facility, slated to manufacture 6- to 12nm chips, significantly less advanced than 3nm process. At a meeting with
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
RSS