SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 06/10/09 -- SVTC Technologies and PDF Solutions, Inc. have formed a strategic agreement to bring leading-edge product development and yield management services to each other's customers, while creating a platform for seeking mutual clients.

SVTC is a leading independent company providing technology development and commercialization services to global clients, with facilities in San Jose, CA and Austin, TX. PDF (NASDAQ: PDFS), headquartered in San Jose, is the leading provider of process-design integration technologies to enhance IC manufacturability.

Under the agreement, PDF and SVTC will provide project specific process optimization and yield enhancement services that leverage PDF's Characterization Vehicle Infrastructure (CVi(TM)), data POWER® yield management system (YMS) and Maestria® fault detection and classification (FDC), as well as SVTC's analytical labs. SVTC's process engineering expertise and PDF's statistical analysis services will be coupled with this broad array of yield enhancement technologies to accelerate development of CMOS-based semiconductors, MEMS and photovoltaics at SVTC.

"This agreement enables SVTC to gather critical data for more rapid process yield improvement," said Dave Bergeron, SVTC CTO. "As a result, we will be able to enhance our baseline yield and equipment monitoring capabilities, particularly for our customers in 200mm wafer manufacturing, and for our MEMS and solar clients as well."

"We are pleased to create this relationship to allow SVTC's customers to enjoy the benefits of PDF's solutions that have previously only been available for high volume manufacturers. They will be able to bring new products to market more quickly, and to manufacture them more cost effectively," said John Kibarian, PDF CEO.

Business development and joint marketing form an important part of the agreement. PDF and SVTC will promote each other's services to their respective clients, and will work together to seek mutual customers that can benefit from the analytical and process development strengths of both companies.

SVTC serves customers in rapidly growing markets such as novel memory, novel transistors, MEMS, biotechnology, image sensors, analog and high-voltage applications. PDF clients include integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), foundries, and fabless IC producers, whose products include application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), memory, communications, and mixed-signal chips.

"Today's economic climate is accelerating technical industries toward a horizontal business model, where manufacturers must outsource key portions of their production and technology development to processing specialists such as PDF and SVTC," said Joe Bronson, SVTC CEO.