U.S. ATE Export Rules to be Eased
By Jeff Chappell -- EDN, March 4, 2004
Sometime later this year the U.S. federal government is likely to double the pattern rate control threshold on export licenses for ATE.
This comes as good news for U.S.-based tester vendors, because it will remove some of the bureaucracy currently involved in exporting more advanced testers. It's also possible that at some point in 2005, federal export restrictions on ATE for non-microwave applications could be removed altogether, according to Maggie Angell, director of public policy for Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).
The moves would naturally make it easier for domestic ATE suppliers to ship equipment abroad, namely to growing markets like China.
SEMI has been working with the U.S. Dept. of Commerce and the U.S. Dept. of Defense to ease restrictions on ATE exports. Currently, under the terms of the Wassenaar Agreement, any test equipment with pattern rate speeds above 333MHz requires a federal export license.
The United States is one of the 33 member countries of the Wassenaar Arrangement, an international body formed in 1996 to address the export and control of conventional military arms and dual-use goods and technologies, such as semiconductor technology. The Wassenaar group decides on export controls and then each member country is responsible for enacting them.
Late last year, the international body agreed to raise the pattern rate threshold for ATE equipment to 667MHz, meaning that ATE with pattern rates slower than that would be able to be exported without requiring an export license. The federal government will be announcing the change in domestic export controls sometime this year, a move that is virtually certain, the Washington, D.C.-based Angell said.
The changes only pertain to ATE for non-microwave applications with pattern rates below 667MHz; all of the other export controls for semiconductor process equipment, metrology and test remain in place.
Meanwhile, SEMI has continued to lobby U.S. commerce and defense officials to remove export controls altogether for ATE. The consortium has brought technical experts from member companies together with experts from the DOD and the DOC; federal experts realize that the ATE has outpaced regulations, and the technology involved is not strategic in terms of national security and defense, Angell explained.
As a result, SEMI expects U.S. export officials to float a proposal before the Wassenaar Arrangement later this year to remove the export controls on ATE. That international body would then decide on the proposal in November or December of this year; if approved it would then fall to member countries to implement the changes during 2005.
As for the rest of the equipment industry, it may be sometime before they see similar changes in federal export rules. But Angell said that SEMI is working with the government to streamline the export license process in the meantime.
"From a longer-term perspective we would like to look at that," Angell said of export controls on process equipment. "We see it as an area that needs more to be done." But considering where the industry is in the current cycle, the more immediate concern for this year is to lessen the bureaucracy involved in getting an export license, a process that often takes longer in the United States than other Wassenaar member countries.
"There is a growing recognition that there is a significant difference in the timing of the licensing process compared to other countries in Wassenaar," Angell said.
