Profile: P D F Solutions Inc (PDFS.O)

PDF Solutions, Inc., incorporated in 1992, is a provider of infrastructure technologies and services. The Company’s technologies and services target the entire process life cycle, which is the term it has coined for the time from the design of an integrated circuit (IC) through volume manufacturing of that IC. Its solutions combine software in the form of cell libraries for IC designs, test chips, an electrical wafer test system, proven methodologies and professional services. The Company analyzes yield loss mechanisms to identify, quantify and correct the issues that cause yield loss. Its technologies and services have been sold to integrated device manufacturers, fabless semiconductor companies and foundries. On October 7, 2008, the Company acquired substantially all of the assets of Triant Technologies (2005) Inc. (Triant).

Services and Solutions

The IC manufacturing process involves four sequential phases: research and development to establish unit manufacturing processes; integration of these unit processes into functional modules, such as metal or contact modules; a yield ramp of products through the entire manufacturing line, and volume manufacturing of all products through the life of the process. The Company offers solutions targeted to each of these phases. Its targeted offerings include Process R&D, and Process Integration and Yield Ramp.

PDF Solutions, Inc.’s process R&D solutions are designed to help customers increase the manufacturing processes by characterizing and reducing the variability of unit processes and device performance with respect to layout characteristics within anticipated process design rules. Its process integration and yield ramp solutions are designed to enable customers to ramp the yield of new products early in the manufacturing process by characterizing the process-design interactions within each key process module, simulating product yield loss by process module, and prioritizing quantitative yield improvement by design blocks in real products.

The Company’s volume manufacturing solutions are designed to enable customers to extend its yield ramp services through the life of the process by continuing to collect test data and equipment signals during production and improving yield while reducing the overhead of manufacturing separate test wafers. They enable the customer to collect test data and equipment signals during production to improve yield while simultaneously reducing the overhead of manufacturing. Optional software modules allow customers to perform rapid yield signature detection, characterization and diagnosis. With this software, the Company enables mapping and analyzing data from memory bits to wafer to final packaged parts with die identification traceability. PDF Solutions, Inc.’s mæstria and YA-FDC process control software offerings enable its customers to monitor and control process signals to detect and diagnose yield loss related to equipment performance. The Company’s design-for-manufacturability (DFM) solutions are designed to enable customers to optimize yields within the design cycle before a design is sent to the mask shop.

Products

PDF Solutions, Inc.’s test chip design engineers develop a design of experiments (DOEs) to determine how IC design building blocks interact with the manufacturing process. Its characterization vehicle (CV) software utilizes the DOE, as well as a library of building blocks. The Company’s CV infrastructure includes CV Test Chips, pdCV Analysis Software and pdFasTest Electrical Wafer Test System. Its yield ramp simulator (YRS) software analyzes an IC design to compute its systematic and random yield loss.

The Company’s pDfx environment is only offered to customers in a service format. Its dataPOWER YMS platform collects yield data, loads and stores it in an integrated database and allows product engineers to identify and analyze production yield issues using yield analysis software tools. dataPOWER software contains visualization and reporting tools, including Web-based access through the dP-Monitor module included in the core product. YA-FDC allows online modeling to create real-time virtual measurements of final product attributes during processing.

The Company competes with KLA-Tencor, MKS Instruments, Inc., Mentor Graphics, Syntricity Inc., Synopsys, Inc., TIBCO Software Inc., Applied Materials, Inc., BISTel Inc., MKS, ARM Ltd. and Virage Logic Corporation.