 Hi, so please introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Amy Liang. I work for a company called Formfactor located in Bay Area, California. We're a semiconductor test and measurement company. And what were you talking about here? Yeah, I'm really excited to be here today. I'm a panel for women in technology and today along with other esteemed panelists we were able to share our perspectives about women in technology and importance of mentorship and sponsorship. And can you explain a little bit what your company is doing? What you do? Sure, our company is a leading provider of semiconductor test and measurement product. So for every consumer electronics that we use in our life and it contains lots of semiconductor chips, before the chips go inside the electronics our product physically verify the performance of the chips to make sure if it's good or bad and only select the good ones before they go into the electronics. So we make the test products to do the verification. And you do those machines all over the world? We actually make lots of those products probe card or probe stations in United States and also in Germany and we have customer support and sales office around the world wherever there's semiconductor fabs and customers and that's where our offices are. So it's like quality assurance you kind of like check every chip and discard the you only keep the A plus or the perfect ones? Actually we do a variety of things it could be just go or no go it's good or bad decision right but sometimes like computer chips they're different speed grade lower performance computing chip or higher performance computing chips so oftentimes we actually do a known good die testing to verify the actual device performance at the wafer level as well. All right how long have you been working there? Oh boy longer than I can count actually I've been with the form factor majority of my career a little bit over 20 years now and actually joined the company while it was a pre-IPO startup and now we're multi-billion dollar enterprise serving all the top semiconductor companies around the world. Is the success in the company because of you? No certainly part of the contributor to the team and we have just fabulous team innovators and the great operational team to make a high quality product we have amazing worldwide customer service and sales team right and it takes a village to make a very complicated pro card or probe stations and it's an amazing team contributes to our company success. So how did the idea start and at which point did you come in and what was your role to bring it forward? Is it okay to ask? Oh absolutely it's actually a very interesting story our company is called form factor because of the original idea of this interconnect technology was intended for to enable advanced packaging for semiconductor chips to make the form factor of the chip much smaller right and but later on in our entrepreneurial journey it turned out to be a really useful interconnect technology for semiconductor tests. So we actually use a MIMS based compliant contact to make probe card to touch the semiconductor wafer to verify its device performance and so when I joined the company back in 2003 we were a small startup we were testing a DRAM chips at the time to allow the customers to test many many chips simultaneously to reduce cost of tests that was really the claim of failing for form factor when we were a startup company and my job with the company started as a product marketing person at the beginning and thanks to my company over the course of nearly 20 years I was able to do a little bit of everything mostly in customer facing role including business development general management I also later on did merger and acquisition and now I'm actually heading our global sales and application so it's really cool. Is it true that the marketing is the most important personal company? No I don't think so I think it's any to make a successful product everybody involved are super essential because you start from a concept which are the innovators of the technology and then it comes with a marketer who's a partner to go out get the customer requirement and then it take an amazing operational team actually make a high quality product and then later on once you sell it you better be able to provide the best customer service it's a full life cycle to earn the customer trust to buy the product not not just buy it one time and buy it repeatedly over over again right so now it's everybody is a critical piece of this puzzle to make the engine work. Is it fun role to have to be in the Silicon Valley and checking the Silicon that it's that it's fine and you kind of like the check for the Silicon Valley? That's right. Worldwide? I know it's so amazing every day I just continuously amazed by the different Silicon innovations that taking place in the Silicon Valley right and be part of the enabling technology to verify the performance one of the major traction for me to working at form factor for nearly 20 years is because the Silicon every year the Silicon is different and you need to innovate and make different test product to verify its performance yeah it's a super fascinating and interesting. So in the Silicon Valley it's not just iPhone apps right there's still a lot of silicon stuff happening innovation you talk about in the Silicon Valley. That's right actually our company largest the locate manufacturing locations in Livermore California at just the 40 minutes outside east of San Francisco we actually have a facility of 50,000 square feet where we have semiconductor fab clean room using lithography plating and all the advanced fabrication techniques to make physically make a wafer and then to use the features on the wafer to make a test products so yes everything is we actually make physical product not just the apps of course software is a big part of our product enabling technology from design and verification stuff right but yes we actually make a piece of equipment you can touch and use it on the wafer. When I did some interviews few years ago with the people who talk about EDA and chip design it sounds like it's the most advanced thing people can do in the world like maybe there's rocket design but I'm not sure it's more advanced than chip design right is it very smart people in this industry? Yes it's the whole semiconductor ecosystem have amazing amazing talent right and the EDA as you mentioned is the front-end design process right and even in the fabrication once the chip is designed and how do you actually fabricate it and also of course go into the supply chain how do you what kind of materials do you use to fabricate the wafer or what kind of equipment do you use to test to measure right it's just fascinating industry. Alright and if you're a college kids or you're considering going to semiconductor industry definitely think about semiconductor and also with the the Biden administration's chips act and it's going to create a lot of more opportunities and manufacturing facilities across the United States and I think it's going to be even more exciting field for all the younger generation as well. And it's not only the the hugely complicated low-low nanometer chips there's a whole range of chips right and what is the nanometer size on the chips you work with? Ah it's it's actually really wide range the most leading edge ones as you mentioned they're currently in 5 nanometer 3 nanometer right we're getting down pretty low close to zero nanometer if you will right so those are the chips that go into data centers or cell phone chips or actually chat GPT in the AI data processing units right and of course then there are also other larger nanometers like in 28 nanometers or even higher for automotive chips like that's enable cars like Tesla the central control unit right so it's really a wide range depends on the application. Alright was there some disagreements in the panel? I actually know it's amazingly amount of agreement but lots of different experience right and I think the common theme was really around the importance of having mentors to help create opportunities for women in technology right always open the doors and support women and make sure that they have somebody to bounce ideas with and also support them as they explore the new areas and even though we have men and women that's really cool to see the supporter from male allies on the panel it's important to have constructive criticism and honest reviews or honest advice in the career that's right yes absolutely I think you know we we become better version of ourselves because we learn from our failures and so we can do better next time right having somebody who can give you constructive feedback and help you to learn from your failure the sooner you fail the sooner you become better. 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