December 19, 2007 - In a bid to extend into wafer probing, Rudolph Technologies has acquired the semiconductor business assets of Applied Precision LLC, a provider of wafer probe card metrology systems and wafer probe process management technologies. Terms of the cash-and-stock transaction were not initially disclosed.

For Rudolph, the deal "accelerate[s] our efforts to be a more complete supplier of back-end equipment and software," said chairman/CEO Paul McLaughlin, in a statement, noting that this deal is yet another sign of continuing industry consolidation. He also referred to unspecified "multiple synergies between the two organizations."

Nathan Little, EVP and GM of Rudolph's inspection business unit, added that the two companies "have an established presence in the final manufacturing arena and are well positioned to address new opportunities in wafer probe card test and analysis."

The Applied Precision business will be reformed under a new "probe card test and analysis" division within Rudolph, which will have the "number one market share position in the probe card analytics market," said Little.

This marks the latest in a series of M&A activity in the test realm to consolidate and widen companies' reaches. In just the past few weeks, Teradyne has acquired Nextest to get back into the flash memory tester business; meanwhile, test tool supplier Verigy said it would buy time-to-yield firm Inovys to better target "the crossroads of design, manufacturing and yield metrology."