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Advantest Corporation (NYSE:ATE), has unveiled its new T6373 LCD driver test system for LCD source, gate and one-chip controller driver ICs. Available as of July 2007, it comes equipped with up to 3072 channels and offers parallel test for up to 32 devices.
Spurred by next year's Beijing Olympics and by the rapid transitioning of television broadcast technology from analog to digital, there is a growing worldwide demand for large, high- definition LCD panels, destined for use mainly for flat-panel digital televisions. Such demand is expected to result in an expansion in the market for LCD driver ICs, a key component of LCD panels. Forecasts suggest that by 2010, shipments of these ICs will increase by around 45%, but that this will represent a monetary increase of just 7%, leading to mounting pricing pressure for producers. At the same time, test time and test costs are spiraling upward, as the introduction of higher definition and larger LCD panels necessitates faster driver ICs, with increasingly high bit resolution...