December 6, 2007 – Verigy, the former semiconductor automated test equipment (ATE) business of Agilent Technologies, has agreed to acquire privately held Inovys, which develops design, failure analysis, and yield software, for an undisclosed amount, a deal that enables the companies to better target “the crossroads of design, manufacturing and yield metrology.”

Demands for ROI from leading-edge chipmaking facilities, plus the trend toward a more distributed manufacturing model involving fabless companies and foundries, is pushing for more and higher levels of integration for design and production test, the companies explained in a statement.

“Time-to-entitled-yield becomes a critical metric that places the focus squarely on test,” said Keith Barnes, chairman, CEO and president of Verigy. Combining Verigy’s V93000 system with Inovys’ design-for-test and design-for-manufacturing tools generates “significant time-to-yield value,” he said.

“Together we bridge the gap between design validation/silicon debug and high-volume manufacturing,” noted Inovys CEO Paul Sakamoto. “We are excited to have found a company with such a complementary culture, product line, commitment to customer satisfaction, and vision. And with Verigy’s increasing market share at the more challenging designs and process nodes, we are even more confident of our success moving forward.”

Inovys says its test suite reduces design debug from weeks to hours, lower production test costs by up to a factor of three, and support real-time yield enhancements with unique failure analysis tools. The combination of Inovys tools and Verigy’s “production workhorse” V93000 SoC test platform “[has] shown tremendous economic benefits in a recent customer experience,” the firms stated. Inovys has about 50 customers including IDMs, fabless firms, backend outsourcing firms, and foundries.