American Marconi Wireless News - Aehr Test Systems Expands Silicon Photonics Production Momentum with Follow-On Production Order from Lead Customer

The AI industry is rapidly transitioning from moving electrons to moving photons, driving a significant expansion in silicon photonics as hyperscale data centers seek higher bandwidth, lower latency, improved power efficiency, and greater scalability. As silicon photonic integrated circuits become increasingly critical to next-generation AI networking, optical switching, co-packaged optics, linear pluggable optics, and chip-to-chip optical I/O architectures, manufacturers are placing greater emphasis on production-scale reliability screening and WLBI to ensure long-term performance while improving manufacturing yields and reducing production costs.

The ordered system is configured with nine independent WaferPak^® test blades, each capable of delivering up to 3,500 watts of power for production burn-in and reliability screening of high-performance silicon photonic integrated circuits used in optical transceivers and emerging chip-to-chip optical I/O applications. The system also includes Aehr's fully integrated automated wafer-level handling solution, consisting of the FOX-XP multi-wafer production burn-in system, integrated WaferPak Auto Aligner^™, robotic wafer handling, and automated wafer loading and unloading, providing a complete high-volume automated WLBI solution.

The system is expected to ship during the first half of calendar 2027.

Gayn Erickson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aehr Test Systems, commented:

"This production order is another indication that silicon photonics is moving from technology adoption into manufacturing scale-up, and we believe that transition represents a significant long-term growth opportunity for Aehr. The order reflects our lead silicon photonics customer's continued expansion of manufacturing capacity and represents another important milestone in the industry's transition toward high-volume production of silicon photonic integrated circuits.

"As AI clusters continue to grow in size and performance, silicon photonics is emerging as a key enabling technology for delivering the bandwidth, power efficiency, and scalability required by next-generation AI infrastructure. What began with optical transceivers is now expanding into optical switching, co-packaged optics, linear pluggable optics, and chip-to-chip optical I/O.

"At the same time, the industry is moving toward more highly-integrated optical architectures that integrate or closely co-package laser sources with silicon photonic integrated circuits. These advances improve performance, reduce system cost, simplify manufacturing, and make device reliability even more critical.

"As silicon photonic devices continue to increase in complexity, power density, and production volumes, we believe WLBI is becoming a foundational manufacturing step for many of these next-generation devices. Identifying latent defects and stabilization of the integrated lasersbefore packaging improves manufacturing yields, lowers overall production costs, and enables the long-term reliability demanded by hyperscale AI infrastructure.

"Over the past year, we've seen a meaningful increase in engagement from silicon photonics companies around the world spanning engineering qualification systems, production capacity planning, and next-generation device roadmaps. These discussions reinforce our belief that the market is approaching an important inflection point.

"As production requirements evolve toward higher power, fully-automated wafer-level manufacturing, and larger production volumes, we believe our FOX-XP platform and integrated automated wafer-level handling solution position Aehr to become the production standard for wafer-level reliability screening of silicon photonic integrated circuits."

Industry analysts project strong growth for silicon photonics through the remainder of the decade as hyperscale AI infrastructure, cloud computing, high-performance computing, and advanced optical networking continue driving demand for higher bandwidth and lower power interconnect technologies. Emerging applications including co-packaged optics, optical switching, linear pluggable optics, and chip-to-chip optical I/O are expected to further expand the adoption of silicon photonics throughout AI infrastructure. Industry research also points to increasing adoption of integrated and co-packaged laser architectures that improve optical performance, manufacturing scalability, and system efficiency while further increasing the importance of production reliability screening.

Aehr's FOX-XP multi-wafer production burn-In system performs full WLBI, stability testing, and production screening of semiconductor devices while enabling customers to test multiple wafers simultaneously in a highly automated manufacturing environment. The FOX-XP platform supports silicon photonics, silicon carbide power semiconductors, AI processors, optical devices, and other semiconductor products requiring production burn-in and reliability screening.

About Aehr Test Systems

Headquartered in Fremont, California, Aehr Test Systems is a leading provider of test solutions for testing, burning-in, and stabilizing semiconductor devices in wafer-level, singulated die, and package-level form, and has installed thousands of systems worldwide. Increasing quality, reliability, safety, and security needs of semiconductors used across multiple applications, including advanced artificial intelligence (AI) processors, silicon photonics, data and telecommunications infrastructure, electric vehicles, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, solar and wind power, computing, and solid-state memory and storage are driving additional test requirements, incremental capacity needs, and new opportunities for Aehr's products and solutions. Aehr has developed and introduced several innovative products including the FOX-P^TM families of test and burn-in systems and FOX WaferPak^TM Aligner, FOX WaferPak Contactor, FOX DiePak^® Carrier and FOX DiePak Loader. The FOX-XP and FOX-NP systems are full-wafer contact and singulated die/module test and burn-in systems that can test, burn-in, and stabilize a wide range of devices such as leading-edge silicon carbide-based and other power semiconductors, 2D and 3D sensors used in mobile phones, tablets, and other computing devices, memory semiconductors, processors, microcontrollers, systems-on-a-chip, and photonics and integrated optical devices. The FOX-CP system is a low-cost single-wafer compact test solution for logic, memory and photonic devices and the newest addition to the FOX-P product family. The FOX WaferPak Contactor contains a unique full-wafer contactor capable of testing wafers up to 300mm that enables IC manufacturers to perform test, burn-in, and stabilization of full wafers on the FOX-P systems. The FOX DiePak Carrier allows testing, burning in, and stabilization of singulated bare die and modules up to 1024 devices in parallel per DiePak on the FOX-NP and FOX-XP systems up to nine DiePaks at a time. Acquired through its acquisition of Incal Technology, Inc., Aehr's new line of high-power package-level reliability/burn-in test solutions for AI semiconductor manufacturers, including its ultra-high-power Sonoma family of test solutions for AI accelerators, GPUs, and high-performance computing (HPC) processors, position Aehr within the rapidly growing AI market as a turnkey provider of reliability and testing that span from engineering to high volume production. For more information, please visit Aehr Test Systems' website at www.aehr.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or Aehr's future financial or operating performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "going to," "could," "intends," "target," "projects," "contemplates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern Aehr's expectations, strategy, priorities, plans, or intentions. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, future requirements and orders of Aehr's new and existing customers; Aehr's ability to receive orders and generate revenue in the future, as well as Aehr's beliefs regarding the factors impacting the foregoing, including the growth of the markets referred to herein; Aehr's ability to integrate Incal efficiently; and the timing and extent to which the acquisition is accretive. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are also subject to other risks and uncertainties, including those more fully described in Aehr's recent Form 10-K, 10-Q and other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Aehr disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this press release.

# # #

Contacts:

SOURCE: Aehr Test Systems

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

P.Silva--AMWN