Aehr Receives Initial Order From New Customer for FOX-NP Solution for Production Test and Burn-in of Silicon Photonics Devices

FREMONT, Calif., May 19, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aehr Test Systems (NASDAQ: AEHR), a worldwide supplier of semiconductor test and reliability qualification equipment, today announced it has received orders from a new customer and their subcontract manufacturing supplier for a FOX solution including a FOX-NP full wafer test system, an initial WaferPak Contactor, and a FOX WaferPak Aligner to perform production qualification of their silicon photonics devices. The total solution, including the FOX-NP system, WaferPak Aligner, and WaferPak Contactor, is expected to ship prior to the end of Aehr’s next fiscal quarter ending August 31, 2020.

This new customer will begin utilizing Aehr’s FOX-NP system for initial production burn-in and stabilization of their high performance silicon photonic devices and is then expected to transition to Aehr’s FOX-XP wafer-level test and burn-in systems to meet their volume production forecast.

The semiconductor industry today exceeds $400 billion per year with a single CMOS chip containing as many as a billion or more transistors, forming complex circuits that are still 100% electrical. Using photons instead of electrons, silicon photonics brings optical communications into the fabrication space of the semiconductor industry, enabling low-cost, high-volume assembly and the capability to bring faster, smaller, interconnects, which consume less power and offer the entire semiconductor industry a whole new world of opportunities. Silicon photonics is expected to be the most scalable optical transceiver technology available while delivering lowest cost per bit for 100Gb and higher transfer speeds. Next generation data centers, high performance computers, and eventually consumer video products will all benefit from optical interconnects built from silicon photonics.

Gayn Erickson, President and CEO of Aehr Test Systems, commented, “We are delighted to announce another new customer for our FOX-P Platform, beginning with this initial order for our new FOX-NP test and burn-in system to support their initial product qualification of their high performance silicon photonics devices. This is a 100% production test application, so unlike a sampling burn-in process step, this customer uses the FOX system to stabilize each device as a critical production process step, and will need incremental capacity for FOX systems and WaferPaks with each increment in their volume production forecast.