FormFactor, Inc., headquartered in Livermore, California, is a leading provider
of test and measurement technologies. We provide a broad range of high-performance
probe cards, analytical probes, probe stations and thermal sub-systems to both
semiconductor companies and scientific institutions. Our products provide electrical
information from a variety of semiconductor and electro-optical devices and
integrated circuits (devices) from development through production. Customers
use our products and services to lower production costs, improve yields, and
enable development of complex next generation devices.
FormFactor, Inc. was incorporated in 1993, and we introduced our first product
in 1995. In June 2016, we acquired Cascade Microtech Inc. ("Cascade Microtech"),
a leading manufacturer of advanced wafer probe cards, probe stations, and thermal
sub-systems. The acquisition of Cascade Microtech transformed our business into
a broader electrical test and measurement market leader with greater scale,
diversification and market opportunities.
As of December 30, 2017, we operate in two reportable segments consisting of
the Probe Cards Segment and the Systems Segment. Sales of our probe cards and
analytical probes are included in the Probe Cards Segment, while sales of our
probe stations and thermal sub-systems are included in the Systems Segment.
We design, manufacture and sell multiple product lines, including probe cards,
analytical probes, probe stations, thermal sub-systems, and related services.
Probe cards. Our probe cards utilize a variety of technologies and product
architectures, including micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies.
We use advanced design and automation technologies to enable our rapid and cost-effective
manufacturing of resilient multi-material composite spring-like electrically-conductive
contact elements with characteristic length scales of a few microns. These contact
elements are designed to provide a specific range of forces on, and across,
a chip’s bond pad, solder bump, or copper pillar during the test process
and maintain their shape and position over a range of compression levels. In
addition, while maintaining these mechanical characteristics, the contact elements
must achieve reliable and high-fidelity electrical contact through wafer surfaces
that are generally oxidized or otherwise contaminated, and must maintain these
attributes over hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of compression cycles.
Our range of capabilities enable us to rapidly produce customer-design specific
probe cards that deliver leading precision, reliability, and electro-mechanical
performance.
Our probe cards are customized for our customers’ unique wafer and chip
designs by modifying and adapting our standard product architectures to meet
an individual customer’s design layout and electrical test requirements.
We offer probe cards to test a variety of semiconductor device types, including
“system on a chip” products, mobile application processors, microprocessors,
microcontrollers, graphic processors, radio frequency, analog, mixed signal,
image sensors, electro-optical, DRAM, NAND flash memory and NOR flash memory
devices.
For many advanced applications, our products must maintain tens of thousands
of simultaneous high-fidelity low-impedance electrical contacts with the corresponding
chip contacts on the wafer. Our present technologies enable probe cards with
over 100,000 contact elements with spacings as small as 40 microns over geometries
as large as 300mm. In addition, for high signal-fidelity devices such as wireless
radio frequency transceivers and automotive radar chips, our probe card technologies
are capable of testing at millimeter-wave frequencies range, currently up to
81 GHz.
We have invested, and intend to continue to invest, considerable resources
in proprietary probe card design tools and processes. These tools and processes
are intended to enable the rapid and accurate customization of products required
to meet customer requirements, including automated routing and trace length
adjustment within our probe cards, to rapidly design complex structures.
In addition, some of our customers test certain chips over a large range of
operating temperatures. We design probe cards to provide for a precise match
with the thermal expansion characteristics of the wafer under test across the
range of test operating temperatures. For many of our products, our customers
can use the same probe card for both low and high temperature testing. We also
design probe cards for customers that require extreme positional accuracy at
a specific temperature.
Through on-going investments in both our technology and operations, we continue
to innovate and improve so that our products will meet customers’ future
technical roadmap performance, quality, and commercial requirements. We also
focus upon leveraging these ongoing investments across all advanced probe card
markets to realize synergies and economies of scale to benefit our competitiveness,
time-to-market and overall profitability.
Analytical Probes. We offer over 50 different analytical probe models for engineering
and production testing. Analytical probes are used for a diverse set of applications,
including device characterization, electrical simulation model development,
failure analysis, and prototype design debugging. Our customers for analytical
probes include universities, research institutions, semiconductor integrated
device manufacturers, semiconductor foundries, and fabless semiconductor companies.
We continue to add new models of analytical probes that address measurements
with higher complexities and at higher frequencies up to 1 THz.
Probe Stations. Probing systems are required in the development of new generations
of semiconductor processes and designs. Probe stations are highly configurable
for the required measurements, the size and type of wafer under test, the characteristics
of the device design to be tested, and the temperatures at which testing is
to be performed. Process development and design complexities have continually
increased with each new generation of semiconductor technology to accommodate
smaller design geometries, new materials and more layers. Probing systems are
a fundamental tool for characterizing and verifying electrical performance and
reliability to enable new semiconductor technologies. We design our probing
systems for semiconductor design engineers to capture and analyze more accurate
data in a shorter amount of time.
We build upon our probe stations to create integrated measurement systems that
provide complete solutions for our customers’ complex measurement requirements.
These systems include test instrumentation, probe, cabling configurations, and
software to enable fast, accurate, on-wafer data collection for complex application
and measurement needs. We offer pre-configured and customized measurement systems
for production testing, power device characterization, vacuum probing, cryogenic
probing, high-pressure probing, and a variety of other specific applications.
Thermal Subsystems. Our thermal subsystems produce thermal chucks and other
test systems used in probe stations. Thermal chuck systems enable the testing
of devices at precise temperatures or across a range of temperatures.
Services and Support. In addition to routine installation services at the time
of sale, we offer services to enable our customers to maintain and more effectively
utilize our products and to enhance our customer relationships. In addition
to traditional maintenance services, our applications engineers assist our customers
in test methodologies to make advanced measurements during process and product
development, and during mass production.
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