Solid state drive deal opens door to subcontract test

“As total shipments of SSDs grow to 300 million units by 2019, according to the market research firm Gartner, Advantest is leveraging its many years of test experience and volume-manufacturing partnerships to enable the scalable subcontractor test model for the SSD industry,” said Colin Ritchie, vice president of system level test at Advantest. “We look forward to collaborating with USI and our customers to help the industry achieve the impressive growth forecasts demanded by data-storage providers and users.”

The availability of cost-optimised test services designed specifically for SSDs allows design companies to optimise their investments and focus their resources on product development early in their product lifecycles. Furthermore, it provides them with the pathway to quickly and easily scale up their test capacity from initial device qualification to high-volume production.

Outsourced assembly and test houses in the semiconductor industry provide a proven and highly successful business model from which the SSD industry can benefit. Many SSD vendors with NAND Flash and system-on-chip-based controller experience have worked with OSATs on other products and recognise how such partnerships help them to achieve both their engineering and production goals.

USI is a leading original design manufacturer and electronics manufacturing services (ODM/EMS) company with a wide range of electronic module and semiconductor devices. The company has extensive experience in designing, developing, manufacturing and testing SSDs. Its products include SATA, SAS and PCIe (AHCI and NVMe) SSDs shipping in high volume to both the client and enterprise markets. In Shanghai, USI operates a 65,000-square-metre factory and a SSD development centre.