Let's answer the last one first, since it is the easiest. Of course there is no successful conspiracy in the ATE business. How could there be? We are just not capable of that level of cooperation! Let's take the other two questions in order. Software Base First, corporate consumers of ATE have repeatedly asked for a common software base that can be directly used on all tester platforms with little or no modification to the source. This scheme would benefit users tremendously. Since the largest issue in changing tester platforms is the software conversion and correlation, standardized software would allow the customer to change platforms with impunity. There are two big reasons why this standardization does not occur. The first is that standardization more or less demands that a single hardware standard design dominate the market. The example of the personal computer comes to mind. There used to be a lot of companies making a lot of wildly different computers. At this point, PC software can be moved from machine to machine. The PC market has become a mass-market hell of low margins and vast sameness among products. A lot of the competition is based on pure cost/price wars. ATE companies don't want this to happen. Also, the continued hyperactive development of features in silicon has caused the ATE architecture to race along to meet new needs. Since these developments occur at different times at different companies, there is a natural tendency to grow away from each other. More simply put, it is hard to standardize software and hardware, and the ATE companies don't want to do it because they will lose profits. Or, perhaps they will just lose. Handling Standards The next question was about handling standards, and that is another interesting issue. The comparison is sometimes made that in wafer fab tools, there are some standards for input and output couplings and many other items that are much more advanced than in the backend. Although I am not an expert in the tools used for the front end, my friends who are have helped me figure out that the front-end folks do have more standardized interfaces. They also tell me that, for the most part, one eight-inch wafer is very much like the next one. This is certainly different from our backend world of an infinite selection of packaging processes, types, dimensions and mass. Also, almost no money is being spent on this area (reference this column in the May-June issue of Chip Scale Review). Bottom line, handler companies are facing a very rapidly moving target and barely have enough money to pursue it. So, we see that in ATE, as with any other market place, standardization will have to wait for the Bill Gates of ATE to be born, come to dominance and leave us all with some sort of marginally performing - but standard - legacy. In fact, maybe that is the real heart of the issue. The participants in the ATE industry are pushing very hard in a pursuit of excellence that will lift them above the pack. As long as that is viable and customers are willing to work with differences that may provide advantages, standardized software and hardware will just not happen.
|
