June 17, 2008 — Presto Engineering, Inc., a provider of product engineering services to the semiconductor industry, and iRoC Technologies Corporation, a provider of soft error solutions for semiconductors, announced that Presto will serve as the exclusive North American sales distributor for iRoC Soft error rate testing (SERTEST) service. SERTEST enables integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) and fabless vendors to determine the impact of cosmic rays and alpha particles on the reliability of their next-generation system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductor devices. As part of the agreement, Presto Engineering will augment its existing in-house semiconductor testing, reliability and analysis offering with SERTEST, while the infrastructure for SERTEST will remain with iRoC in Grenoble, France.
SERTEST is a turn-key solution for radiation testing (accelerated and real-time) and alpha particle counting.
“We are seeing a lot of new devices coming to Presto for design success analysis services, which helps IDMs and fabless vendors improve the speed and predictability of their new product release,” says Presto Engineering CEO, Michel Villemain. “We constantly scout for new and unique services to add to our portfolio that will help to make our customers successful. SERTEST is moving into the critical path for new product qualification, and we are pleased to be able to offer it to our customers.”
“The majority of our business is in North America, and more specifically in the Silicon Valley area,” notes Eric Dupont, president and CEO of iRoC. “This partnership enables IDMs and fabless vendors to leverage our SERTEST technical expertise with Presto’s failure analysis and test offerings, providing an even stronger ‘one-stop shop’ for our mutual customers. With this agreement, we look forward to leveraging Presto’s relationships to educate the market and bring SERTEST to new customers.”
According to Peter Liaw, Ph.D., director of quality assurance, NetLogic Microsystems, “Soft error testing has been driven by networking infrastructure applications where long-term reliability, measured in failure in time, is mission-critical. We have found iRoC SERTEST to be an accurate and reliable test methodology, and a standard for our products.”