Acuid has won a lucrative order for its DRAM test equipment from
Infineon Technologies.
"Clearly this is our largest order," Acuid's CEO Hans Rohrer
told Electronics Weekly.
Both sides in the deal are remaining tight-lipped about its
value, although the model bT144E memory testers involved are
"$500,000 to $700,000 each, depending on configuration", said
Rohrer.
Acuid, a young Edinburgh-based company, has two sides to its
business: memory test equipment and fledgling fabless high-speed
chip operation. "We have a healthy business. The Infineon deal
easily supports the test side of the business," said Rohrer.
The bT144E is aimed at the development of DRAM in labs, being
capable of testing forthcoming DDR2 memory at up to 666Mbit/s, with
an option to test 1.36Gbit/s DRAM planned for the second half of
2005 and a roadmap to 2.6Gbit/s.
According to Rohrer, Acuid's tester strategy is to move into
production equipment. "Production testers have multiple hundred
million dollar potential," he said. "With a lead customer we can go
into production testers. There are companies interested in being
this lead customer." Flash memory and logic testing are other
potential markets, said Rohrer.
High-speed chips, the company's other business, are venture
funded with a 10Gbit/s Ethernet chip in the pipeline. "Second
silicon is looking very, very good," said Rohrer. "In the lab it is
running at 14Gbit/s and we keep refining things."
This silicon will be "used to demonstrate the technology,
primarily to show that it deals with dispersion in multi-mode
fibres", said Rohrer.
The technology in this case is a proprietary timing technique
which Acuid decided to use in its own products after trying to
licence it to others.
www.acuid.com