FormFactor Stock

FormFactor, Inc. (FormFactor) operates as a provider of essential test and measurement technologies along the full semiconductor product lifecycle - from characterization, modeling, reliability, and design de-bug, to qualification and production test.

The company provides a broad range of high-performance probe cards, analytical probes, probe stations, metrology systems, thermal systems, and cryogenic systems to both semiconductor companies and scientific institutions. The company's products provide electrical information from a variety of semiconductor and electro-optical devices and integrated circuits from early research, through development, to high-volume production. Customers use the company's products and services to accelerate profitability by optimizing device performance, reducing scrap, and improving yields.

As of December 30, 2023, the company operated in two reportable segments consisting of the Probe Cards segment and the Systems segment. Sales of the company's probe cards and analytical probes are included in the Probe Cards segment, while sales of the company's probe stations, metrology systems, thermal systems and cryogenic systems are included in the Systems segment.

Products

The company designs, manufactures, and sells multiple product lines, including probe cards, analytical probes, probe stations, metrology systems, thermal systems, cryogenic systems, and related services. On November 1, 2023, the company completed the sale of its FRT Metrology business.

Probe Cards

The company's probe cards utilize a variety of technologies and product architectures, including micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies. The company uses advanced design and automation technologies to enable rapid manufacturing of resilient composite contact elements with characteristic length scales of a few microns. These contact elements are designed to provide a specific range of forces on and across a chip's bond pad, solder bump, micro-bump, through-silicon-via (TSV), or copper pillar, during the test process, and maintain their shape and position over a range of compression levels. In addition, while maintaining these mechanical characteristics, the contact elements must achieve reliable and high-fidelity electrical contact through wafer surfaces that are generally oxidized or otherwise contaminated, and must maintain these attributes over hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of compression cycles. The company's range of capabilities enable the company to rapidly produce customer-design specific probe cards that deliver leading precision, quality, reliability, and electro-mechanical performance.

The company's probe cards are customized for its customers' unique wafer and chip designs by modifying and adapting the company's standard product architectures to meet an individual customer's specific wafer and chip layouts and electrical test requirements. The company offers probe cards to test a variety of semiconductor device types, including systems on a chip (SoCs), mobile application processors, microprocessors, quantum processors, microcontrollers, graphic processors, radio frequency, analog, mixed signal, image sensors, electro-optical, DRAM memory (including high-bandwidth memory, or 'HBM'), NAND flash memory, NOR flash memory, and quantum computer processor devices.

For many advanced applications, the company's products must maintain tens of thousands of simultaneous high-fidelity low-impedance electrical contacts with the corresponding chip contacts on the wafer. The company's technologies enable probe cards with over 100,000 contact elements with spacings as small as 40 microns over geometries as large as an entire 300mm wafer. In addition, for high signal-fidelity devices such as wireless radio frequency transceivers and automotive radar chips, the company's probe card technologies are capable of testing at millimeter-wave frequencies range, up to 81 GHz.

The company has invested, and intend to continue to invest, considerable resources in proprietary probe card design tools and processes. These tools and processes are intended to enable the rapid and accurate customization of products required to meet customer requirements, including automated routing and trace length adjustment within the company's probe cards, to rapidly design complex structures.

In addition, some of the company's customers test certain chips over a large range of operating temperatures, such as for automotive and cryogenic applications. The company designs probe cards to provide for a precise match with the thermal expansion characteristics of the wafer under test across the range of test operating temperatures. For many of the company's products, its customers can use the same probe card for both low and high temperature testing. The company also designs probe cards for customers that require extreme positional accuracy at a specific temperature.

Through ongoing investments in both the company's technology and operations, the company continues to innovate and improve so that its products will meet customers' future technical roadmap performance, quality, and commercial requirements. The company also focuses on leveraging these ongoing investments across all advanced probe card markets to realize synergies and economies of scale to benefit the company's competitiveness, time-to-market and overall profitability.

Analytical Probes

The company offers over 50 different analytical probe models for engineering and production testing. Analytical probes are used for a diverse set of applications, including device characterization, electrical simulation model development, failure analysis, and prototype design debugging. The company's customers for analytical probes include universities, research institutions, semiconductor integrated device manufacturers, semiconductor foundries, and fabless semiconductor companies. The company continues to add new models of analytical probes that address measurements with higher complexities and at higher frequencies.

Probe Stations

Probe stations, also referred to as probe systems, are a critical tool for the development of new generations of semiconductor and electro-optical processes and designs. Probe stations are highly configurable for the required measurements, the size and type of wafer under test, the characteristics of the device design to be tested, and the temperatures at which testing is to be performed. Process development and design complexities have continually increased with each new generation of semiconductor technology to accommodate smaller design geometries, complex 3-D architectures, new materials and more layers. Probe systems are a fundamental tool for characterizing and verifying electrical performance and reliability to enable new semiconductor technologies. The company designs its probe systems for semiconductor design engineers to capture and analyze more accurate data in a shorter amount of time and to be able to control and manage testing at temperatures from near absolute zero to hundreds of degrees centigrade.

The company builds upon its probe stations to create integrated measurement systems that provide complete solutions for the company's customers' complex measurement requirements. These systems include test instrumentation, probe, cabling configurations, and software to enable fast, accurate, on-wafer data collection for complex application and measurement needs. The company offers pre-configured and customized measurement systems for production testing, power device characterization, vacuum probing, cryogenic probing, high-pressure probing, photonics testing, and a variety of other specific applications.

Metrology Systems

Until the sale of FRT in November 2023, the company offered surface metrology systems for various applications, including the development, production and quality control of semiconductor products. With resolution down to nanometer scales, these systems measured topography, structure, step height, roughness, wear, thickness variation, film thickness and other parameters. The modular architecture of the systems allowed for the sensor configuration to be customized for the application while leveraging a common platform. These systems integrated hybrid metrology capabilities and proprietary software to enable non-destructive and rapid measurement of multiple features and parameters simultaneously, which had multiple applications but is particularly useful in the growing space of advanced packaging, Silicon Carbide (SiC) power, Silicon Photonics, and MEMS applications.

Thermal Subsystems

The company's thermal subsystems include thermal chucks and other test systems used in probe stations and other applications where precise temperature management is required. Thermal chuck systems enable the testing of devices at precise temperatures or across a range of temperatures. These systems are both marketed externally and allow for vertical integration with the company's probe stations.

Cryogenic Systems

The company's cryogenic systems include the manufacture of precision cryogenic instruments and semiconductor test and measurement systems. These include advanced cryogenic probe systems to test complete wafers or singulated die, as well as Dilution Refrigerator (DR) and Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator (ADR) cryostats used in various applications at temperatures close to absolute zero, including quantum and superconducting computing applications, astronomy, and other situations where cryogenic temperature management is required. These systems are marketed externally and also allow for vertical integration with the company's existing cryogenic wafer and chip probe stations and cryogenic probes.

Services and Support

In addition to routine installation services at the time of sale, the company offers services to enable its customers to maintain and more effectively utilize the company's products and to enhance its customer relationships. The company's applications engineers assist its customers in test methodologies to make advanced measurements during process and product development, and during mass production, along with offering traditional maintenance services.

Customers

The company's customers include companies, universities and institutions that design or make semiconductor and semiconductor related products in the foundry & logic, DRAM, flash, display, sensor and quantum computer markets. The company's customers use its products to test nearly all semiconductor device types, including SoCs, mobile application processors, microprocessors, quantum processors, microcontrollers, graphic processors, radio frequency, analog, mixed signal, image sensors, electro-optical, DRAM memory (including HBM), NAND flash memory, NOR flash memory, and quantum computer processor devices.

Fabless semiconductor suppliers do not manufacture their own semiconductors, but they purchase the company's analytical probes, probe stations, and other System segment products for research and development, and device characterization. They also purchase, or direct their foundries or wafer test facilities to purchase, the company's probe cards to test wafers manufactured for them.

The company's probe stations are installed at customer sites either by the company, its manufacturers' representatives, or its distributors, depending on the complexity of the installation and the customer's geographic location. The company assists its customers in the selection, integration and use of the company's products through application engineering support. The company also provides worldwide on-site probe card maintenance and service training, seminars and telephone support. In certain geographic regions, and for selected products, the company's manufacturers' representatives and distributors provide additional service and support.

The company's customers are Intel Corporation; SK hynix Inc.; Samsung Electronics Co., LTD.; and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., LTD.

Manufacturing

In February 2024, the company entered into an agreement with Grand Junction Semiconductor Pte. Ltd. to divest the company's operations in China and establish an exclusive distribution and partnership agreement to continue sales and support of the company's products in the region (the 'China Transaction'). The China Transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2024.

Sales and Marketing

The company sells its products worldwide through a global direct sales force and through a combination of manufacturers' representatives and distributors.

The company's direct sales and marketing staff is located in the United States, China (pending the close of the China Transaction), France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.

The company also has a network of representatives and distributors across the globe to broaden the company's reach. The company's distributors purchase its products and resell them at prices and upon terms set by the particular distributor. The company typically uses distributors in particular geographies due to local regulations or business customs.

Competition

Probe Cards

The company's primary competitors are AMST Co., Ltd., Chungwa Precision Technology, Feinmetall GmbH, Japan Electronic Materials Corporation, Korea Instrument Co., Ltd., M2N Co., Ltd., Microfriend Inc., Micronics Japan Co., Ltd., MPI Corporation, Micro Square Technology Inc., NHK Spring Co., Ltd., Soulbrain Engineering, Nidec SV TCL, Synergie CAD, TechnoProbe S.p.A, TSE Co., Ltd., WinWay Technology Co., Ltd., WILL-Technology Co., Ltd., and Yokowo, among others.

Analytical Probes

The company's primary competitors in the analytical probe market are GGB Industries Inc. and MPI Corporation.

Probe Stations

The company's primary competitors in the probe station market are HiSOL, Inc., LTD/Accretech, The Micromanipulator Company Inc., MPI Corporation, Semiprobe, Signatone Corporation, Tokyo Electron ('TEL'), Tokyo Seimitsu Co., and Wentworth Laboratories Inc.

Thermal Subsystems

In the market for thermal subsystems, the company competes principally against ERS Electronic GmbH, Espec Corp, and Temptronic Corporation.

Cryogenic Systems

In the market for cryogenic systems, the company competes principally against Bluefors Oy, Entropy, Leiden Cryogenics B.V., Montana Instruments, Nagase Techno-Engineering Co., Oxford Instruments, and STAR Cryoelectronics.

History

FormFactor, Inc. was founded in 1993. The company was incorporated in Delaware in 1993.