ASE opens 2nd facility in Silicon Valley

Taipei, July 12 (CNA) ASE Technology Holding Co., the world's largest IC packaging and testing services provider, has opened a second facility in Silicon Valley through a sub-subsidiary to expand its capacity in the U.S. semiconductor testing market.

In a statement released on Friday, ASE Technology said ISE Labs, a unit of ASE Technology's wholly owned subsidiary ASE Inc., has doubled its R&D lab and business space to more than 150,000 square meters with the new facility in San Jose and reinforced its commitment to Silicon Valley by expanding its footprint in North America.

ASE Technology said ISE Labs purchased the building in late 2023 and has built it out specifically to accommodate the engineering needs of its North American clients.

Many of ISE Labs' clients are working on solutions for emerging semiconductor applications, such as artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and high-performance computing (HPC), the statement said.

In addition to shifting some team members between facilities, ISE Labs is seeking a number of highly skilled engineers and technicians for the new production site, according to ASE Technology.

The San Jose facility will primarily specialize in qualification and reliability processes and solutions, such as environmental, mechanical, electrostatic discharge (ESD), failure analysis and burn-in, the company said.

In particular, ISE Labs' high-power burn-in solutions, which are vital to detecting early failures in a semiconductor device, are among the best and highest-performing in the industry, ASE Technology said.

ISE Labs' original Silicon Valley facility in Fremont will expand its set of test functions, including automated test equipment (ATE) test program development, ASE Technology added.

"We are firmly committed to our investment in Silicon Valley. It both contributes to the region's revitalizing its position in the semiconductor industry and supports U.S. manufacturers more broadly," ASE Technology CEO Tien Wu (吳田玉) said in the statement.

"Our ISE Labs division -- the largest semiconductor testing service provider in North America -- is essential to advancing ASE's role in driving the development of the world's most innovative electronics," Wu said.

According to ASE Technology's annual report, ISE Labs was set up in Fremont in November 1983 to provide IC testing services.

In addition to Fremont and San Jose, ISE announced in March that it purchased a plot of land in Jalisco in western Mexico, for about 216 million Mexican pesos (US$12.16 million) to build a plant targeted at North America's industrial and automotive electronics market.

According to ASE Technology, Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co., a subsidiary listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, has also purchased land in Mexico to build a facility to provide IC packaging and testing solutions to the automotive and power management supply chains in North America.