Sam Naschy
(Reuters) – Japan's Advantest Corp said on Wednesday its memory tester business is expanding due to surging demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) tasks.
HBM is a type of high-performance memory that stacks chips to save space and reduce power consumption, and is used when processing the huge amounts of data required for AI tasks.
“Today, HBM represents about 50 percent of our memory-test business, and we expect that to continue for the foreseeable future,” CEO Douglas Lefever said in an interview.
Chip-testing equipment maker Advantest has worked with HBM since it was first produced in 2013, leveraging its relationships with memory makers, Lefever said.
The company expanded its market share of memory testers in the fiscal year ending March and expects its memory division's full-year sales to increase 47%.
The drive to improve AI and chip performance will lead to increasingly complex combinations of components that require extensive testing to ensure performance.
“Business will be driven from the cloud and data center, but what's going to really accelerate things is when edge applications come in,” said Lefever, who took on the role in April.
Edge AI refers to running AI tasks on local devices rather than in a centralized data center.
The electronics industry, hit by sluggish demand for smartphones, tablets and PCs, is hoping the introduction of AI capabilities will encourage consumers to upgrade their devices.
“As new devices come out, they become more complex, so there's a lot more testing involved,” Lefever said.
(Reporting by Sam Naschy; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
