| To a question from DBS analyst Chung Wei Le at AEM's 2Q2021 earnings call yesterday (7 Aug), AEM's CEO, Chandran Nair, gave the following insights on what makes AEM stand out -- head and shoulders above its rivals. More notably, this points to the bright prospects of AEM as it ventures beyond serving one key customer -- Intel Corp, the world's largest chip manufacturer. AEM has said it is deeply engaged in business discussions with a number of the world's top semiconductor companies. |
Q: What's the competitive advantage that AEM offers in comparison to peers such as Teradyne and Advantest, especially now that they have ventured into system level tests?
A: AEM is probably the only company in the world with over a thousand systems that have been running for a decade -- of course various versions of it and we continue to deploy new versions -- so we probably have the most experience of any company in the world in what it takes to do system level tests.
 "We probably have the most experience of any company in the world in what it takes to do system level tests."-- CEO Chandran Nair |
Now, as system level test is becoming a need and not a want right -- I mean not just good to have -- it is becoming an absolute need for companies that provide high performance computing, application processors that are used in things like mobility devices and so on and of course in the automotive space, these companies have to make sure that they can test in volume before their chips go out to the market or to their end customer.
Our track record to be able to deliver highly reliable testers is one part of our differentiator. The next part is the fact that over the last three years we have invested tremendously in the future of system level tests, so we have the world's leading active thermal controllers.
What this means is, as chips become more complex, as the power and heat dissipation needs of these complex chips are very hard for companies to handle, we probably have the best solution for our customers to be able to do this active thermal control that they need, the ability to test reliably in volume.
And the fact that we continuously invest in meeting the future needs of the customer are probably some of the biggest differentiators
In addition to the technology that we bring, the pedigree and the reliability we bring, is also the fact that we have a very strong presence of field engineers all over the world, where they are very close to the customer, understanding their needs and at the customer sites 24/7 to ensure reliability, and understanding what are the bottlenecks they see, feeding that back to our engineering teams and us continuously improving the solutions our customers get.
In addition to that, as one goes into system level tests, as each company comes out with their own application-specific chip to service their end users, there's a strong embedded DNA in our company to be able to take these common technology pillars, configure them together and create the exact test system that is perfect for that customer's use.
Most other companies come from the other side of the spectrum where they say this is the standard product, and really you need to make your tests meet our needs. That storyline now does not fly with the customers because as they do system level tests on highly application specific chips themselves, they need companies that can address their needs to be able to customize where needed and quickly.
So this is where companies like CEI that we acquired this year, we can have a very quick turn to be able to quickly design, prototype and deploy what the customer needs and this is another big differentiator in our ability to take our solutions to market and deployment.
