Interesting company. I wonder if is is a bunch of ex Tek guys?
Cascade Microtech, Inc. (Cascade) is a developer, manufacturer, and seller of wafer probing solutions used to test and measure complex semiconductors in wafer form in both design and production environments. Customers use the Company's solutions to develop and test advanced integrated circuits and optoelectronic devices, or chips, for a broad range of communications, consumer electronics and computing products. Cascade sells production probe cards, analytical probes, and probe stations. Probe stations manually or automatically align wafers to probe cards or probes to electrically connect test equipment to each chip on a wafer, allowing a variety of electrical and optical, or lightwave, measurements to be taken. The Company designs, manufactures, and sells three product lines: production probe cards, analytical probes and probe stations.
Off the top of my head comments:
I don't recall who we used to buy probe cards from when I was in the business. Most we made ourselves since we had tiny chips limited by a few bond pads to probe. The higher speed cards for complex chips are quite dense and would be a good market I think.
I'd think the real value added is in software to do the testing so I'd rather stick with Agilent..... but Agilent could buy a company like this if they have any decent IP. Do they have any patents? If not, how hard is it to copy a probe card? People in China could buy one probe card from this company then copy it to test their chips in volume. How much of a price/sales is a consulting company worth? |
