Aehr Test Systems Announces Follow-On Order For Its FOX-15™ Wafer-Level Burn-In And Test Systems

FREMONT, Calif., Dec. 9, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Aehr Test Systems (Nasdaq:AEHR), a leading supplier of semiconductor test and burn-in equipment, today announced it has received over $1 million in a follow-on order for its FOX-15 wafer-level burn-in and test system and WaferPak full-wafer contactors from a leading supplier of automotive and industrial integrated circuits.

The FOX-15 system will be used in production and has a capacity of up to 15 WaferPak single-touchdown full-wafer contactors for production burn-in and test of state-of-the-art integrated circuits. As each wafer contains thousands of ICs, the throughput and capacity of the system are quite large, adding to the millions of devices that have already been processed by the FOX-15 systems at this customer’s facility.

“Doing burn-in at the wafer level, before the die are packaged, allows our customers to collect reliability data much earlier in their production process so that they can monitor and continuously improve their wafer fabrication process and yields,” said Carl Buck, vice president of marketing at Aehr Test Systems. “We are pleased to see that our automotive customers are increasing capacity, an indication both of their success and the strength that we are seeing in the automotive market.”

“We continue to feel that our intellectual property and products that address functional test, burn-in, cycling, process development and process monitoring at the wafer level are key differentiators for our company and for our customers that use them,” said Gayn Erickson, president and chief executive officer of Aehr Test Systems. “We are pleased that one of our key customers continues to see significant improvement in cost of test and cost of manufacturing by their implementation of wafer level test and burn-in in production. This is achieved not only through an overall lower capital cost through massive parallel test solutions, but also by finding device defects prior to packaging, allowing our customers to deliver a highly reliable product without the significant cost of finding those defects after the device, or in the case of stacked packages, multiple devices are in final package form.”

As usage of electronics in automobiles grows, high-density packaging holding multiple die becomes increasingly important. With stacked or multi-die packaging, each of the die in the package must be highly reliable, enabling the multi-die package to meet the stringent reliability demands of the automotive manufacturers. Aehr Test’s FOX system provides full wafer contact parallel test and burn-in solutions for the die before they are assembled into the package. This enables the reliability screening to be done on the die before the assembly of the multi-die package, avoiding the costly scrapping of entire stacked or multi-chip packages when only one of the die fails the reliability screen.

About Aehr Test Systems

Headquartered in Fremont, California, Aehr Test Systems is a worldwide provider of test systems for burning-in and testing logic and memory integrated circuits and has an installed base of more than 2,500 systems worldwide. Increased quality and reliability needs of the Automotive and Mobility integrated circuit markets are driving additional test requirements, capacity needs and opportunities for Aehr Test products in package and wafer level test.  Aehr Test has developed and introduced several innovative products, including the ABTSTM and FOX families of test and burn-in systems and the DiePak® carrier. The ABTS system is used in production and qualification testing of packaged parts for both lower-power and higher-power logic as well as all common types of memory devices. The FOX system is a full wafer contact test and burn-in system used for burn-in and functional test of complex devices, such as leading-edge memories, digital signal processors, microprocessors, microcontrollers and systems-on-a-chip. The DiePak carrier is a reusable, temporary package that enables IC manufacturers to perform cost-effective final test and burn-in of bare die. For more information, please visit the Company’s website at www.aehr.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties relating to projections regarding customer demand and acceptance of Aehr Test’s products. Actual results may vary from projected results. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, acceptance by customers of the FOX and WaferPak contactor technologies, acceptance by customers of the WaferPak contactors shipped upon receipt of a purchase order and the ability of new products to meet customer needs or perform as described. See Aehr Test’s recent 10-K, 10-Q and other reports from time to time filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed description of the risks facing our business. Aehr Test disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this press release.

Contacts:
Aehr Test Systems
Vernon Rogers
EVP Sales and Marketing
(510) 623-9400 x215
vrogers@aehr.com
MKR Investor Relations Inc.
Todd Kehrli or Jim Byers
Analyst/Investor Contact
(213) 277-5550
aehr@mkr-group.com