Lasertec Corp., the sole supplier of machines required to test designs for the world’s most advanced chips, has expanded its list of customers to computer memory makers, President Osamu Okabayashi said in an interview.
The first orders for Lasertec's testing gear using the extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) chipmaking method coming from manufacturers of DRAM products — a type of computer memory used to perform operations that doesn’t hold data after the power is switched off — came in the fiscal year ending June, Okabayashi said, declining to name specific customers or disclose exact numbers.
The demand helped push Lasertec’s bookings to a record ¥112.9 billion ($1 billion) in the period, a number that the company forecasts will climb another 42% this year. The company's shares jumped as much as 5% in Tokyo on Friday, the biggest intraday spike in a month. The Nikkei average was up by about 2%.