September 5, 2007 — Presto Engineering Inc., a provider of product engineering services to the semiconductor industry, has announced a partnership with NanoLab Technologies Inc. to offer turn-key nanoscale engineering, test, and analytical services and thus help customers improve speed and efficiency and minimize the cost of bringing new products to market.

Presto aims to play a leading role in what it hopes will be the industry’s transformation to a “labless” product engineering model, analogous to the fabless/foundry manufacturing model. The labless model, Presto says, allows manufacturers to share capital-intensive test and analytical capacity. Presto Engineering acquired a test facility from Cypress Semiconductor in July 2007, for the necessary equipment and space; NanoLab Technologies adds analytical services (failure analysis, electron microscopes, etc.) to the portfolio of services.

“The expertise and capital expenditures required to maintain state-of-the-art capability in all of the specialized scientific and engineering disciplines needed to support advanced semiconductor manufacturing have grown beyond the means of all but the largest manufacturers,” said NanoLab president John Traub. “Outsourcing these services to suppliers like NanoLab and Presto allows manufacturers to convert the fixed cost of internal capabilities to a variable cost that is readily scalable in response to varying demands. Because we can focus our efforts and investments more narrowly and operate more efficiently, we can provide superior capability, often at a lower cost.”