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PDF Solutions' new product announcement hits with unintentionally perfect timing |
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May 14, 2007 at 05:49 PM |
The folks at PDF Solutions, they of process-design optimization solutions fame, could not have timed the release of their latest news better if they had tried---and they probably didn't.
Today's PR announcing the company's Memory Yield Enhancement product coincided with several other memory sector manufacturing--related bits, including Mike Clendenin's EE Times' story on how DRAM and flash suppliers have mostly sought out megafab alliances, SEMI's own PR about the latest edition of FabFutures that reveals a preponderance of memory capacity activity, and the latest rumblings of a possible Intel/STMicro NOR-flash joint venture.
PDF is better known for the unusual number of mathematicians working there than its corporate marketing savvy per se. One measure of a company's commitment to marketing---or lack thereof---is when it puts the name of an investor relations exec as the contact on its nonfinancial press releases. Such is the case with PDF, but it is not alone in the semiconductor equipment, materials, components, and services industry, a sector notorious for a pervasive (though thankfully not all-encompassing) lack of respect for marketing and communications.
Enough carping about crappy marketing. PDF has a good track record helping logic fabs speed up their yield ramps and juice their existing lines' yields. The PR includes a bit of case study info about success at an Elpida memory fab, and a news release that includes a customer by name with any amount of detail should be lauded.
I wonder if PDF will get a shot at some Characterization Vehicle and Scribe CV business in what will be the largest chipmaking factory ever built: the Toshiba-SanDisk joint venture's Fab 4. Said to have a potential capacity of 210,000 wafers/month---which George Burns, president of Strategic Marketing (no pun intended) Associates, told EET would, if it were a country, "be ranked number eight in terms of capacity, just behind France, but ahead of Ireland"--- the flashy mondofab will require some serious yield-ramping muscle and expertise to hit the numbers it needs to start paying back the nearly $10 billion investment.
It doesn't take a marketing guru to see that is one Godzilla-sized market opportunity.
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