Salland Engineering , part of Japan’s Advantest since 2024, is quadrupling its test capacity. CEO Paul van Ulsen discusses the rapid changes sweeping through semiconductor testing. “We now operate as Advantest’s engineering and photonics test house.” Paul van Ulsen still thinks it’s “incredibly cool and interesting” to lead Salland Engineering in Zwolle. When Advantest acquired his company in 2024, he agreed to stay on as CEO for another two years. For now, however, he has no intention of leaving. “As someone with a technical heart, I find it tremendously exciting to be part of all the technological craziness that’s happening.” That excitement comes at a price, Van Ulsen quickly adds. “Everything is moving incredibly fast with AI. It’s going in every direction. The sky isn’t even the limit anymore. We really have to operate in a completely different way. In the past, we’d work through an entire project before starting implementation. For example, we used to have about three and a half months between tape-out – when a design house sends its chip to the wafer fab – and actual testing. That gave us enough time to produce and assemble the required test hardware. With that approach, we’d be far too late today. Just making a probe card for a large AI chip now takes five to six months.” Paul van Ulsen of Salland Engineering, an Advantest subsidiary: “We’re Advantest’s engineering and photonics test house.” Under pressure Lead times aren’t the only thing increasing. AI processors also require much more test time. Whereas a sizable chip might previously have spent ten or twenty seconds in a tester, the latest AI processors can already require half an hour. Add wafer and final testing together and the most complex devices can take two to three hours, according to Van Ulsen. That’s because an advanced AI processor can consist of dozens of individual dies integrated into a single package. The more complex the package, the more important it becomes to know before assembly that every individual component works properly. “You want to be absolutely certain that those ICs and chiplets are 100 percent good before putting them into a package. So, you need to do much more wafer testing before assembly. After that, you test the complete device again.” The required test capacity is also increasing because of the growing complexity of AI processors. They contain ever more transistors, but “you can’t simply clock such a chip faster. There’s a certain cadence at which you can run those test patterns. We’re running into limits while the chips just keep getting bigger.” Bits&Chips’ Dutch state of semicon 2026 This article is part of the Bits&Chips special edition on the Dutch state of semicon, published on 23 October 2026. Order your hard copy of the special at info@techwatch.nl. That translates directly into more machines. According to Van Ulsen, a complete tester with the necessary instrumentation can easily cost 2-3 million dollars. For some types of AI processors, manufacturers need not a handful or a few dozen but hundreds of test cells to keep up with production volumes. “That’s why Advantest is doing so well.” The current AI boom is putting the entire supply chain under pressure. Van Ulsen sees Advantest having to supply numbers of systems that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. “What used to be ten years’ worth of machines is now, figuratively speaking, a quarter’s worth.” He sees the same thing among industry peers. “What used to be a year’s production of probes is now being made in a month.” The Zwolle facility has been testing AI accelerators for years, including chips from the UK’s Graphcore, Eindhoven startup Axelera and other platforms developed by European AI chip designers. Fueled by the current boom, investors are often pouring hundreds of millions of dollars or more into these tech companies. Salland is expanding its Zwolle site this year with an additional 2,000 square meters of office and test-floor space. Expanding A