Fab equipment firm Exicon said on Wednesday that it has supplied a prototype of its burn-in tester to Samsung.
The deal was worth 10.7 billion won and Exicon will be supplying more of the units up to December this year.
Exicon primarily manufactures memory tester and solid-state drive tester. DRAM tester accounted for 75% of its sales with the remainder coming from SSD testers. Samsung is its main customer.
Burn-in tester tests the durability of finished memory chips. As memories are becoming more integrated with higher capacity, high performance testers are being required to test them.
Exicon’s burn-in tester can test DDR5, LPDDR5 and GDDR6 as well as other memory products. It can supply high capacity currents and has a high temperature chamber. Conventional burn-in testers cost around 200 million won but Exicon’s costs around 800 million won.
DDR5 is the latest standard in DRAM. Samsung is preparing to ship them when Intel and other CPU companies launch their latest CPUs that will be paired with the memory.
Intel will launch their CPU that will go with DDR5 in the first half of next year. DDR burn-in tester shipment is also expected to increase around the same time period.
A Exicon spokesperson said the company will be able to expand supply of burn-in tester for its customer’s new production line next year.
South Korean analysts expect Exicon’s memory tester business to record over 40 billion won higher sales this year compared to last year.
DI, a competitor to Exicon in testers, is Samsung’s current main supplier of burn-in tester.
Exicon is also close to finishing development of CMOS image sensor testers, people familiar with the matter said.
