Reedholm signs joint marketing and support agreement with Taiwan’s STAr Technologies

Reedholm Systems of Georgetown, TX, USA has signed a joint marketing and support agreement with STAr Technologies of Hsinchu City, Taiwan to provide a turn-key offering consisting of a test system, prober/handler, and load board/probe card, with characterized, assured performance of all three items.

Founded in 1983, Reedholm provides new and fully refurbished parametric and wafer-level reliability (WLR) test systems, high-power wide-bandgap test systems, and support and service agreements.

Established in 2000, STAr provides intellectual property, software, hardware, consumables, service and expertise to the semiconductor industry, spanning parametric electrical test (E-test), wafer-level and package-level reliability (WLR & PLR), mixed-signal tests, assembly & packaging services, probe cards, load boards, test interfaces and sockets, to top-tier players such as TSMC, UMC, Global Foundries, SMIC, KYEC, ASE, Samsung, Hynix, Elpida, Toshiba, Renesas, Maxim, and OmniVision.

The combined offerings will be under the Reedholm Systems brand (regardless of where the products are sold) for activities such as: process control monitoring (PCM), wafer-level die sort, packaged part/final test, and reliability (packaged and wafer level).

For the burgeoning wide-bandgap power device market, customers are demanding newly designed products with safety requirements in mind for applications that involve measuring voltages of 10kV and currents of 50A or more. Reedholm and STAr are striving to develop the supply of such tools on a broader basis and share details about evolving customer needs.

Reedholm’s products include a series of parametric test systems (RI-40, RI-75, RI-EG) that are used for the gamut of dc parametric test requirements. The latest system – the RI-10kV/50A model – addresses both vertical and lateral GaN and SiC device test requirements.

STAr’s range includes the Virgo series parametric and reliability probe cards, Aries series wafer-sort/function tests probe cards, and the Magic A-series, P-series and X-series Probe Station.

STAr will have primary market responsibility in the Pacific Rim markets (Taiwan, Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, along with access to Thailand and Philippines), while Reedholm will have primary responsibility for North American markets. The parties will work together to address how to best serve customers in Europe and markets outside of North America and the Pacific Rim.