To our valued customers and the entire semiconductor community,
As an individual involved in semiconductor reliability and a key contributor to your organization’s direction, I wanted to share with you what Accel-RF has been able to accomplish during the recent months of the pandemic slowdown. We have focused our efforts on supporting your challenges as our industry comes back to work in our labs and fabs. All of us have had many uncertainties and changes in our everyday lives. Some of these changes will affect how we work for an extended time, if not an ongoing evolution of affairs.
Typically, I could meet you at scheduled events that allowed us time to get together face-to-face. These were the occasions that I looked forward to developing new relationships, catching up with colleagues, and presenting Accel-RF’s latest equipment to assist the reliability test engineer with the “next big thing.” In some instances, you allowed me the opportunity to visit you at your office or lab. Looking back on 2020, there have been few opportunities for these personal discussions.
Although reliability testing may have slowed down during recent months, semiconductor applications and new technology have continued. There are now many new applications and markets emerging. Accel-RF has continued our drive to reach 5G device reliability testing demands with the development of a modular millimeter wave testing capability. Accel-RF has been in the development of E-band, 60GHz to 90GHz, modular test solutions to easily extend the frequency capability of our existing product. In addition, Accel-RF has partnered with several customers to explore secondary device effects and their role in system reliability. These include WCDMA modulation and multi-tone intermodulation performance with age. Accel-RF delivers pulsed DC and RF test systems that investigate trade-offs and similarities of various failure mechanisms that drive intrinsic and extrinsic reliability performance. Accel-RF is building on our space qualification heritage with NASA and ESA to address the newly released US Government Aerospace GaN Technologies space qualification guideline.
After six months of uncertainty, there still exist evolving and dynamic facets in the on-going business environment. At Accel-RF, we have focused on changing operations to stay safe but steadfast in our determination that we exist to serve our community with emerging test equipment solutions and a deeper reliability awareness. To reach our industry with information on new reliability techniques and test methods, we have established a “Knowledge Base” video and document library on our website.
For an update on our most recent reliability test talks and near-term future publications, please visit our website. A shortlist of some of the information available is shown below:
- WCDMA Test Performance vs. Age
- E-Book compiling many of the detailed discussion on reliability testing methodologies
- Testing at MMW frequency and preparing for the 5G revolution
- The Accel-RF System Time-to-Market Challenge
- Inter-modulation distortion (IMD) investigative report (coming this fall).
We are here and supporting all customers per their specific requirements. If you need anything at all, please feel free to contact me anytime.
Sincerely,
Roland Shaw
President, Accel-RF Corporation
