Cascade Microtech Inc.

Main Activity in Nanotechnology

Material Manufacturer

About Company

We are a worldwide leader in the design, development and manufacture of advanced wafer probing solutions for the electrical measurement and test of semiconductor integrated circuits and chips. Our customers use our products to perform testing of chips while in wafer form, or wafer probing, in both engineering and production test environments. Our engineering probe stations and analytical probes are used in research and development to perform precise electrical measurements, or electrical metrology, on increasingly complex and high speed chips in order to assure quality and reliability, reduce costly redesigns, accelerate time-to-market and improve chip fabrication processes. We derive a large majority of our revenue from the sale of our engineering probe stations. Our production probe cards reduce manufacturing costs of complex and high speed chips by identifying defective chips early in the process and by testing multiple chips concurrently.

Each of the 20 largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world, in terms of revenue, was one of our more than 800 customers in 2003. Our top 10 customers in 2003 were Agilent Technologies, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, Micron Technology, NEC, Northrop-Grumman, Sony, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Texas Instruments. These customers use our probing solutions to perform engineering and production testing of a wide variety of chips, including radio frequency chips, digital signal processors, telecommunications chips, advanced memory chips, microprocessors, microcontrollers, graphics processors and application specific integrated circuits.

During the last decade, growth in the computer, telecommunications, consumer and industrial electronics markets has increased demand for advanced chips. Market data indicates that worldwide semiconductor sales totaled $166.4 billion in 2003 and are expected to grow to $219.6 billion in 2005. In order to increase the speed and decrease the cost of chips, semiconductor manufacturers have continuously pursued advancements in manufacturing technologies, including the use of smaller chip elements, new materials and larger 300mm wafers. These advancements in chip manufacturing have led to increasing challenges in the design, production and test of chips.