About PDF Solutions

PDF Solutions, Inc provides comprehensive data solutions designed to empower organizations across the semiconductor and electronics ecosystems to improve the yield and quality of their products and operational efficiency for increased profitability. The company derives revenues from two sources, Analytics and Integrated Yield Ramp. The company's offerings contribute to Analytics revenue through contract fees for on-premise software and hardware system licenses, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and other professional services. Certain of the company's Characterization services engagements contribute to Integrated Yield Ramp revenue through contract fees and a value-based, variable fee or royalty, which it calls Gainshare. The company operates worldwide with offices in Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The company's customers include Fortune 500 companies across the semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. These companies use the company's products and services to achieve various goals depending on whether they are integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), fabless semiconductor companies, foundries, equipment manufacturers, electronics manufacturing suppliers (EMS), original device manufacturers (ODMs), outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSATs), or system houses. For example, the company's foundry customers generate and analyze key manufacturing data using its solutions to shorten the time necessary for technology development and to provide their fabless customers with a higher yielding process with improved electrical performance, which are both critical metrics for market success. Higher yields in less time can also mean less total raw materials and process runs, which help lower customers' total cost and minimize environmental impact. Also, equipment manufacturers and factories use the company's connectivity products to implement evolving industry standards for their equipment or operations, respectively, with required quality and stability. By way of further example, the company's IDM and fabless customers use its solutions to generate unique, differentiated data that can be analyzed with its machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to predict downstream manufacturing issues, resulting in shorter time for designs to meet performance requirements with fewer iterations and faster time-to-market. For final example, the company's foundry and OSAT customers use the AI and ML applications of its software to optimize for process control, assembly, and/or test. Strategy The key elements of the company's strategy are to offer a common, flexible platform for a broad group of customers across the supply chain; drive tool-level software installations to create an infrastructure of connected equipment and enable smart factories; create differentiated data sources for better analytics; and collaborate with other industry leaders to bring additional unique data to its platform and enable new and differentiated applications. Technology and Intellectual Property Protection As of December 31, 2023, the company held 115 U.S. patents, with expiration dates on issued patents ranging from 2024 through 2042. The company intends to prepare additional patent applications when it feels it is beneficial. Some of the technology the company protects by patent includes elements of its CV and DFI systems and inventions related to AI/ML. The company protects its trademarks with registration of marks, including Characterization Vehicle, Cimetrix, CV, eProbe, Exensio, pdFasTest, PDF Solutions, and the PDF Solutions and Cimetrix logos. The company has common law rights to additional trademarks, including ALPS, DFI, DirectProbe, DirectScan, Fire, and Sapience. Products and Services Products The primary software products and software and hardware systems of the company's platform include the following: Exensio Software: The company's Exensio software products address the big data manufacturing challenge of advanced process nodes and highly integrated products, by providing a common environment throughout the supply chain for different data types, including inline and end-of-line metrology, yield, parametric, performance, manufacturing consumables, tool-level sensor data, test floor data, logistical data, as well as custom data types. Exensio products are designed to enable real-time rapid diagnosis and understanding of key manufacturing and test metrics during both inline and end-of-line wafer processing, helping customers reduce product variability and cost simultaneously. By integrating silos of data and applying AI and ML, Exensio products resolve the limitation of local optimization and provide better visibility across the entire production process, reducing the time it takes to make critical decisions that can drive higher product yield, quality and reliability. The company's collaboration with strategic partners is intended to also integrate data from those partners' products to make it available in Exensio and also to develop new applications to inter-operate with those products and enhance the value to mutual customers. For example, in 2023, the company started offering Sapience Manufacturing Hub, which provides a single, common connectivity platform between enterprise applications, such as MES, ERP, and its Exensio software. Sapience Manufacturing Hub enables advanced applications - including those for top management - that benefit from more real-time and detailed insight into manufacturing. The company's Exensio Foundry Product Costing module, which leverages Sapience Manufacturing Hub, provides more accurate insight into the gap between plan costs and actual costs, enabling actions to improve profitability. Exensio Foundry Product Costing module integrates with SAP S4/HANA due to the company's collaboration with SAP SE to enable this capability. Exensio software is available as either an on-premise license or SaaS and is offered in four main, separately-offered Exensio products targeting the needs of the customer's business model: Exensio IDM, Exensio Fabless, Exensio Foundry, and Exensio OSAT. Each of these products are comprised of two or more modules to provide specific capabilities to address a particular type of company's needs and requirements; however, there are common features, functionality, and purpose across some of the key modules as follows: Manufacturing Analytics - This module uses the company's proprietary database schema to store collected data in a common, unified environment with a consistent view. For example, product engineers use it to identify and analyze production yield, performance, reliability and other issues. Elements of this module are designed to handle very large and complex data sets that are commonplace in the semiconductor industry. To support the multi-dimensional product requirements of its customers, the powerful, interactive visualization and analysis capabilities in this product are highly flexible and user-configurable. Process Control - This module provides failure detection and classification (FDC) capabilities for monitoring, alarming, and control of manufacturing tool sets. These capabilities include proprietary data collection and analysis of tool sensor trace data and summary indicators designed to rapidly identify sources of process variations and manufacturing excursions. When used together with Manufacturing Analytics and related modules, the accretive data mining and correlation capabilities are designed to enable identification of tool level sources of yield loss and process variation and enable predictive and proactive optimization decisions for process control, process adjustments, preventive maintenance scheduling, tool corrective actions, wafer dispatching, and wafer level and final test to impact end of line product yield, performance, and reliability. Test Operations - This module provides comprehensive data collection and analysis capabilities for data generated during manufacturing test operations designed to optimize test operations management overall, including improving test productivity, performing part average test, supporting test floor operations, and implementing adaptive test. Test Operations is also designed to provide predictive insights based on proprietary analytics during test, assembly and packaging to maximize the efficiency of test operations, productivity improvements and yield reclamation. Assembly Operations - This module provides the capability to link assembly and packaging data with other product lifecycle data, including fabrication and characterization data, across the product life cycle. Data sources could include manufacturing, wafer acceptance test, wafer sort, test and assembly, final test, and field use. The proprietary data linkage enabled by Assembly Operations is also designed to enable device manufacturers to maintain full traceability of their finished products back to the source wafer without the need for Electronic Chip IDs (ECIDs). This capability is becoming an essential requirement for safety-critical market segments such as automotive and military-aerospace. Design-for-Inspection System: The company's DFI system, which it has provided under a lease arrangement to some customers, leverages its production-proven design and analysis infrastructure and is designed to enable customers to achieve non-contact, inline electrical inspection of either its proprietary on-chip instruments or their product chip layout structures. The electrical measurements augment and enhance existing inline defect inspection and metrology methods for more effective process control and inline, direct inspection of product wafers. The DirectScan application of the DFI system includes the company's proprietary Exensio Characterization and Fire layout analysis software and the eProbe non-contact e-beam tool. The original application of the DFI system also included the company's on-chip instruments. These elements are described as follows: Proprietary Software - The company's Fire module is designed to analyze IC product layout features to help determine which parts of the product layout to inspect. The company's Exensio Characterization module is designed to analyze the billions of measurements collected using the eProbe tool. As part of the system offering, it generally uses the Characterization module to provide its customers analysis services, a summary of its findings, and recommendations. DFI On-Chip Instruments - The company's on-chip measurement instruments are tuned to capture key features of its customers' product layouts, including those identified using the Fire module. As part of the system offering, it generally provides design services to create these instruments. These DFI instruments are designed to be placed in test chips, scribe lines, or in product die without any area penalty, and to exhibit specific electrical responses. eProbe Non-Contact E-Beam Tool - The company's eProbe e-beam tools are designed for contactless measurement of the electrical response of the DFI instruments and suitable product layout structures. As part of the system offering, the company generally provides tool support services to customers to operate this tool. The third generation tool includes advances in accuracy and sensitivity and, in addition to enabling DFI on-chip instruments to be used for inline control for leading-edge semiconductor process nodes, is designed to enable customers to see defects in product wafers inline within acceptable queue time and much higher throughput. Characterization Vehicle System (also branded as CV System): The company's CV system is a combination of CV test chips, hardware to test such products, software to analyze the test results, and related services. This system is designed to accelerate the efficiency of yield learning by shortening the learning cycle, learning more per cycle, and reducing the number of silicon wafers required in manufacturing processes. This system includes physical IP in the form of test structures and DOEs that are tuned to its customers' product and/or process specifics, tester hardware, data analysis, and training. The primary software and hardware products included in the CV system are as follows: CV Test Chips - The company's proprietary test chips are designed by its professional engineers using its proprietary Fire software. These test chips are run through a customer's manufacturing process, with intentional process modifications, to provide unique, differentiated data to explore the effects of potential process improvements given natural manufacturing variations. The company's custom-designed CV test chips are optimized for its test hardware and analysis software and include DOEs tuned to each customer's process. Types of CV test chips include: The company's full-reticle and shared-reticle CV test chips are designed to provide a fast-learning cycle and are fully integrated with third-party failure analysis and inspection tools for a complete diagnosis to understand root causes. Our full-reticle CV test chips use a shortened process flow to provide a faster learning cycle for specific process modules. The company's Scribe CV test chips are inserted directly on customers' product wafers to collect data about critical layers. The company's DirectProbe CV test chips are designed to enable ultra-fast yield learning for new product designs by allowing its customers to measure components of actual product layout and identify yield issues. pdFasTest Electrical Tester - The company's proprietary electrical test hardware is optimized to quickly test its CV test chips, enabling fast defect and parametric characterization of manufacturing processes. As part of the system offering, the company provides test programs for each CV test chip that are tuned to the customer's process. This automated system provides parallel functional testing, thus minimizing the time required to perform millions of electrical measurements to test the company's CV test chips. The company provides services to analyze the unique, differentiated data output of this tester using the Exensio Characterization software to provide actionable insights to its customers. Exensio Characterization software - This module, which is designed to integrate seamlessly with the rest of the Exensio software, collects the data generated from its CV test products, generating models of the performance effects of process variations on these design building blocks. As part of the system offering, it also offers analysis services, if the customer elects not to do such analysis itself. Cimetrix Software Products: The company's Cimetrix software products enable equipment manufacturers in the semiconductor and electronics industries to provide standard interfaces on their products for efficient equipment communication, control, and data collection. Numerous industry standards have been established for equipment connectivity and control, including the SEMI (Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International) defined SECS (SEMI Equipment Communication Standard), GEM (Generic Equipment Model), GEM300, and EDA (equipment data acquisition) standards. The company's Cimetrix products are designed to fully support these industry standards to enable equipment manufacturers to implement robust, turnkey support for these connectivity and control standards without needing to invest engineering resources to develop their own interfaces to these standards. Factories that purchase manufacturing equipment enabled with Cimetrix-supported interfaces, benefit from consistent and robust implementations of industry standards, enabling faster and more efficient implementation of smart manufacturing initiatives that depend on the collection and analysis of manufacturing and product data. Cimetrix products are sold via perpetual licenses and typically sold as part of a software development kit (SDK) that helps equipment manufacturers implement them quickly. The company charges a one-time fee per equipment product type for the SDK license and a one-time fee for each piece of equipment shipped that includes the Cimetrix runtime license. Equipment Factory Connectivity - The company's products for equipment factory connectivity primarily include the following: Cimetrix CIMConnect is a SEMI SECS/GEM interface to the factory host for automated control and data collection. The Cimetrix CIMConnect module supports multiple-host interfaces simultaneously, which allows customers to support legacy, custom, and GEM interfaces. Cimetrix CIMConnect is used in semiconductor wafer fabrication, semiconductor back-end (test, assembly, and packaging), PV, HB-LED, disk drive, flat panel displays, printed circuit boards and other electronics manufacturing. In addition to enabling the implementation of the SEMI SECS/GEM standards E4, E5, E30, E37, E172, and E173, Cimetrix CIMConnect also supports SEMI PV2 (PVECI), A3 (PCBECI), and HB4 (HB-LED ECI) standards. Cimetrix CIM300 is a GEM interface for 300mm equipment using SEMI standards, including E39, E40, E87, E90, E94, E116, E148, and E157. These SEMI standards allow for the full automation required in manufacturing 300mm wafers. Cimetrix CIM300 manages the interdependencies between the standards and simplifies complex scenarios for easy implementation of the standards. These GEM300 standards are required for full automation in manufacturing of 300mm wafers. Cimetrix CIM300 works with Cimetrix CIMConnect to implement the GEM300 and the original GEM suite of standards. Cimetrix CIMPortal Plus is an interface for EDA, also known as Interface A. The EDA standards are E120, E125, E132, E134, E138, E147, and E164. Cimetrix CIMPortal Plus implements the EDA standards in a flexible architecture that collects data from multiple sources and routes the data to multiple clients simultaneously. Factories can use the data gathered through EDA interfaces for FDC, run-to-run advanced process control, equipment health monitoring, chamber/tool matching, predictive maintenance, virtual metrology, diagnostics, and many other equipment-related analytical applications. Equipment Factory Connectivity Testing - The company provides the following products for testing the interfaces developed using its equipment factory connectivity products: Cimetrix EquipmentTest, for testing and validating compliance with the GEM and GEM300 standards, Cimetrix EDATester, for testing and validating compliance with the EDA/Interface A standards, and performance testing of the interface, and Cimetrix ECCE Plus for quick testing of the EDA/Interface A interface. Equipment Control - The company's equipment control product is the Cimetrix CIMControlFramework (Cimetrix CCF) software, which includes components for supervisory control, material handling, operator interface, platform control, and factory automation requirements, to allow equipment manufacturers to meet the requirements of fabrication facilities. Developers can leverage framework components through configuration and extension or customize the framework when unique requirements exist. Cimetrix CCF is designed to allow data generated at any point on the equipment to be quickly and easily accessed by other modules or external applications. Cimetrix CIMConnect, Cimetrix CIM300, and Cimetrix CIMPortal Plus are integrated with Cimetrix CCF to support the SEMI GEM, GEM300, and EDA/Interface A standards. Services The company's services are almost always sold together with, or to support, its products and include the following: Software-as-a-Service - The company provides services to make its Exensio software available to its customers via the Internet, generally hosted by third-party providers. SaaS is considered part of cloud computing since the software is hosted on the Internet, or the cloud. Since its SaaS applications are accessed from a remote server rather than installed on individual machines, it is easier to maintain. For example, when the remote software is updated, the customer's interface is also updated for all users. Cloud computing is designed to eliminate incompatibilities between different software versions and allow it to make incremental updates without requiring software downloads. Additionally, the company's customers can save data to a central online location, which is designed to allow increased project collaboration. As part of these services, the company also typically provides hosted management services for the software and the customer's data stored in its cloud. These services include environment set-up and configuration, system health monitoring, data integration maintenance, integration monitoring, system updates, security, and data upload/download, and license administration. Software Related Services - The company provides software maintenance and support (M&S), data management services, various value-added services (VAS) to install, configure, or create analysis templates, and other professional services to achieve customers' specific outcomes using its software. The company calls this last type of services its solutions offering and, in these cases, it tailors the use of one or more Exensio products to achieve a desired result. For example, the company's AIM YieldAware FDC solution offering is designed to identify the process control variables that have the greatest impact on product yield through professional services that analyze the data from both Exensio Process Control and elements of Exensio Manufacturing Analytics and make recommendations for the customer to implement. VAS are provided by the company's professional service personnel with expertise that enhances and complements the engineering teams at its customers. For example, VAS includes the company's data cleaning and monitoring services. One requirement of big data analytics is to have clean, harmonized data to analyze. This service offering outsources the data wrangling and management effort to free the customer to focus their efforts on analysis, which has a greater ROI to the company than data management. Characterization Services - These services are designed to characterize key product and/or process elements, primarily into CV test structures or DFI on-chip measurement instruments, and typically do not include performance incentives based on the customers' yield achievement. The company provides these services, typically together with all elements of its CV system, to foundry customers in connection with new process technology development and/or yield ramp. In Characterization engagements, it generally provides the analysis of its CV test chips and provide summary findings and recommendations to the customer. Characterization engagements can include DFI systems. Customers The company's existing customers include foundries, IDMs, fabless semiconductor design companies, OSATs, equipment manufacturers, EMS, and ODMs, including those that embed and distribute its Assembly Operations modules in their equipment. The company's semiconductor customers' targeted product segments vary significantly, including microprocessors, memory, graphics, image sensor solutions, and communications. The adoption of the company's solutions by such companies for usage in a wide range of products validates the application of its solutions to the broader semiconductor market. The company often has multiple contracts with a single customer or customer group, with no interdependent performance obligations. In general, its customer contracts are non-cancellable. One customer accounted for 35% of the company's revenues for 2023. Sales and Marketing The company's sales strategy is primarily to pursue targeted accounts through a combination of its direct sales force, its service teams, and strategic alliances. The company's direct sales and service teams combine their efforts to deepen its customer relationships by expanding its penetration across customers' products, processes, and technologies. Competition The company faces indirect competition from the internal groups at IC companies and direct competition from providers of yield management and/or prediction systems, such as KLA Corporation (KLA), Siemens AG (Siemens), Onto Innovation, Inc. (Onto), and Synopsys, Inc. (Synopsys); semiconductor manufacturing software, such as Applied Materials, Inc (Applied Materials), Synopsys, Invantest, Inc., Emerson Electric Co., Onto, and Siemens; inline inspection, metrology and electrical test equipment providers, such as ASML Holding N.V. (ASML), Applied Materials, KLA, and Keysight Technologies, Inc.; and connectivity software or integration products/services supporting factory equipment connectivity or control needs of customers, such as PEER Group, Inc., Kontron AIS, GmbH, Yokogawa Electric Corp., Advantest, and Kornic Automation Co. Ltd. History PDF Solutions, Inc. was founded in 1991. The company was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1992 and was reincorporated in California in 1995. In 2000, the company was reincorporated in Delaware.