Credence Systems Corporation was a manufacturer of test equipment for the global

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...

industry, with a major focus on solving specific challenges facing the fast-growing consumer-driven semiconductor markets. Founded in 1978 by David Mees as Semiconductor Test Solutions, the company changed its name to Credence after acquiring Axiom and ASIX in 1990. The company's

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

was completed on October 28, 1993. It was publicly traded on the

Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

stock market under the symbol CMOS before the merger with

LTX Xcerra Corporation (formerly LTX-Credence Corporation) is an American semiconductor Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) vendor, founded in 1976 in (co-founder) Sol Max's basement, later moving to the Balco building in Newton & GTE building 3 in Needh ...

in 2008. It was headquartered in

Milpitas, California Milpitas (Spanish for "little milpas") is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in Silicon Valley. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 80,273. The city's origins lie in Rancho Milpitas, granted to Californio ranchero José Mar� ...

, and was established in twenty countries. Customers included

integrated device manufacturer An integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a semiconductor company which designs, manufactures, and sells integrated circuit (IC) products. IDM is often used to refer to a company which handles semiconductor manufacturing in-house, compared to a ...

s (IDMs),

wafer A wafer is a crisp, often sweet, very thin, flat, light and dry biscuit, often used to decorate ice cream, and also used as a garnish on some sweet dishes. Wafers can also be made into cookies with cream flavoring sandwiched between them. They ...

foundries, outsource assembly and test (OSAT) suppliers and fabless chip companies.

Product Lines

Over the years Credence either produced or acquired many product lines including: * STS6000 and STS8000 - The earliest STS test product, these purely digital automatic IC testers started as Sentry compatible clones. The programming language was lifted from the Sentry Factor standard and renamed EnFact, for ENhanced FACTor. * AT100/STS3000/STS4000/STS5000 - These Mixed Signal (Analog and Digital) automatic IC testers were derived from the Axiom Technology AT100 located in Burlington, MA. Later this product line was renamed Domain. * SC212 - This line was derived from the ASIX digital automated IC tester acquired from Asix Systems in California. This was one of the first testers touted as having "zero footprint", there being a test head with only a tiny cabinet providing power and airflow instead of a large mainframe taking up test floor space. * Vista/Duo/Quartet - This product line was derived from the Tektronix LT1000 product offering after Credence bought the Semiconductor Test Systems division from Tektronix. * Valstar - A digital automated IC test system of up to 1024 pins. This was one of the few testers Credence made from scratch, as opposed to most of the others which were captured through acquisitions. * Sapphire - An IC test system intended primarily for production testing with multisite capabilities, i.e., the option to test multiple chips in one go. It can be scaled to varying requirements, with a top clock rate of more than 6.4 GHz. In January 2008, Credence decided to stop developing the Sapphire platform, reduce its workforce by 35%, and close the main development site for the platform in

Saint-Étienne Saint-Étienne (; frp, Sant-Etiève; oc, Sant Estève, ) is a city and the prefecture of the Loire department in eastern-central France, in the Massif Central, southwest of Lyon in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. Saint-Étienne is the t ...

, France (previously part of

Schlumberger Schlumberger Limited (), doing business as SLB, is an oilfield services company. Schlumberger has four principal executive offices located in Paris, Houston, London, and The Hague. Schlumberger is the world's largest offshore drilling compa ...

, then NPTest). * Diamond - comprising two system targeted at both chip development testing and production testing, primarily for applications that are cost-sensitive. * ASL - A product series of three distinct models. The entry model has very low environment requirements; it is unusual among

ATE Ate or ATE may refer to: Organizations * Active Training and Education Trust, a not-for-profit organization providing "Superweeks", holidays for children in the United Kingdom * Association of Technical Employees, a trade union, now called the Nat ...

s in that is needs neither water nor specialized power supply. The ASL models are targeted at RF applications such as video, or wireless telecommunication chips. The ASL product line was acquired with the TMT, Inc. acquisition.

Competition

On June 22, 2008 competitor

signed a merger agreement with Credence Systems Corporation: LTX CEO and President David Tacelli will become

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of the merged company.Credence and LTX Sign Merger Agreement
On August 29, 2008 LTX and Credence Systems Corporation complete merger to form LTX-Credence Corporation (NASDAQ: LTXC). On November 18, 2010,

Verigy Verigy Ltd was a Cupertino, California-based semiconductor automatic test equipment manufacturer. The company existed as a business within Hewlett Packard before it was spun off in 2006 as a standalone company. It was purchased by Advantest in 2011 ...

and LTXC agreed on a merger/acquisition operation, the new company will be operated under Verigy name. On March 27, 2011, the merger agreement with Verigy was terminated as Verigy accepted a merger offer from Advantest. LTXC decided to remain a stand-alone company. Before the merger Credence System’s remaining principal competitors in the ATE business (besides LTX) were: *

Advantest is a Japanese leading manufacturer of automatic test equipment (ATE) for the semiconductor industry, and a manufacturer of measuring instruments used in the design, production and maintenance of electronic systems including fiber optic and w ...

Teradyne Teradyne, Inc. is an American automatic test equipment (ATE) designer and manufacturer based in North Reading, Massachusetts. Teradyne's high-profile customers include Samsung, Qualcomm, Intel, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments and IBM. His ...

* SPEA (company) *

(formerly a division of

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

and then

Agilent Technologies Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American life sciences company that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for the entire laboratory workflow. Its global headquarters is located in Santa Clara, California. Agilent was establi ...

) On November 1, 2001, Integrated Measurement Systems, Inc. (IMS) was acquired by Credence Systems Corporation.

External links

Company homepage

References

{{Reflist Equipment semiconductor companies