Data Titans Unite to Bridge Chip-to-Board Manufacturing Divide

DRAMMEN, Norway – May 08, 2026 – In a significant move to tackle one of the electronics industry's most persistent challenges, analytics specialists yieldWerx and WATS have announced a strategic partnership. The collaboration aims to bridge the critical data gap between semiconductor fabrication and printed circuit board assembly (PCBA), promising a unified view of product quality that could redefine manufacturing efficiency and reliability.

For decades, the data generated during the creation of a silicon chip and the data from testing the final assembled circuit board have existed in separate, disconnected worlds. This schism creates a costly blind spot for manufacturers, making it exceedingly difficult to perform swift root cause analysis when a final product fails. The new alliance between yieldWerx, a leader in semiconductor lifecycle analytics, and WATS, a premier test data management platform for electronics manufacturing, intends to tear down these data silos.

The High Cost of a Disconnected View

In modern electronics manufacturing, a single finished product like a smartphone or server contains components whose lifecycles began in vastly different facilities and processes. The journey of a microchip starts as a silicon wafer, where even microscopic impurities can lead to a 10% yield loss, potentially costing millions. As this chip is packaged and then soldered onto a circuit board, it undergoes numerous tests. However, the data from these tests is often isolated.

This fragmentation is the source of major inefficiency. When a defect is found in a final assembled board, engineers face a daunting task: was the failure caused by a flaw in the original silicon wafer, an error during chip packaging, or a problem in the PCBA soldering process? The answer is often buried in disparate databases, requiring significant engineering hours to reconcile. This delay is costly, adhering to an industry axiom known as the "10x Rule," where the cost to fix a defect multiplies by ten at each subsequent stage of production.

This challenge is particularly acute in high-complexity sectors like advanced packaging—where multiple chips are integrated into a single device—and photonics, which uses light for data transfer. In these fields, the intricate interplay between components means that a unified data trail is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for achieving scalable, high-yield production.

A Unified View from Silicon to System

The partnership directly confronts this challenge by integrating two best-in-class platforms. yieldWerx operates at the foundational level, providing an enterprise analytics platform that connects and analyzes data across the entire semiconductor product lifecycle—from initial design and wafer fabrication through wafer sort, die, and packaged device testing.

Complementing this is WATS, a platform developed by Virinco, which is purpose-built for electronics manufacturers. WATS captures, standardizes, and analyzes high-volume test data from PCBA production environments, including in-circuit tests (ICT), functional tests, and final system tests. It gives engineers real-time visibility into board-level yield and quality metrics.

By connecting these two platforms, manufacturers will be able to correlate signals and failures at the board level directly with upstream silicon quality data. The combined solution supports open architectures and APIs, allowing for integration into existing workflows without requiring disruptive, large-scale system overhauls.

"Our customers manufacture complex electronics where board-level test data alone only tells part of the story," said Tom Lomsdalen, CEO of Wats, in a statement. "By connecting PCBA production test data with yieldWerx's upstream semiconductor intelligence, we can give them a more complete picture of their product quality and yield."

This sentiment was echoed by yieldWerx's leadership. "Our customers have been asking for a unified view that links semiconductor yield data with downstream electronics test results, and this partnership delivers exactly that," stated Aftkhar Aslam, CEO of yieldWerx. "Together, yieldWerx and WATS empower engineering teams to move faster on root cause analysis, reduce escapes, and make smarter decisions across the entire product lifecycle."

Revolutionizing Root Cause Analysis and Yield

The practical benefits of this integrated data stream are substantial. By providing a holistic view, the partnership promises to slash the time required for root cause analysis, allowing engineers to move from diagnostics to solutions in hours instead of days or weeks. Earlier detection of patterns that cross manufacturing stages—for instance, identifying that chips from a specific wafer batch are correlated with failures in a particular functional test—can prevent widespread yield loss.

In an industry where even a 0.1% improvement in yield can translate to millions of dollars in revenue for a high-volume product, the financial implications are significant. Companies like onsemi have previously leveraged yieldWerx's platform to cut engineering time by 75% and save over $1 million annually. The new integrated solution is expected to amplify these benefits by extending data visibility across the entire product stack.

This moves manufacturers beyond reactive problem-solving and toward a more predictive model of quality control. By analyzing historical data from chip-to-board, machine learning algorithms can be trained to identify potential issues before they result in defects, further optimizing yield and reducing scrap.

Powering the Next Generation of Electronics

The timing of this partnership is critical, as it aligns with the explosive growth of technologies that rely on complex integration. The advanced packaging market, essential for high-performance computing and AI, is projected to grow to over $66 billion by 2033. The success of this market hinges on the ability to reliably manufacture and test densely packed, multi-chip modules. Without a correlated data strategy, identifying the single faulty die in a complex stack becomes an almost impossible task.

Similarly, in photonics, where electronic and optical components are merged on a single chip, the manufacturing process is notoriously sensitive. The ability to link optical performance metrics back to the semiconductor fabrication process is crucial for improving yields and driving down costs. This partnership provides the foundational data infrastructure needed to support innovation in these demanding fields.

By creating a comprehensive data thread that follows a product from its silicon origins to its final system form, yieldWerx and WATS are not just solving a current problem; they are building a platform for future manufacturing innovation. This level of traceability and analysis will be instrumental in enabling the next wave of smaller, faster, and more powerful electronic devices.