Keysight Technologies reported flat year-over-year revenues in the most recent quarter, but delivered at the high end of its guidance to Wall Street.
Revenues were $751 million for Keysight’s fiscal fourth quarter, compared to $750 million during the same period last year. Keysight President and CEO Ron Nersesian said the company’s performance “was a strong close to the year … as customers increased investments in next-generation technologies.”
Net income for the quarter was $92 million. Keysight posted profits of $277 million during the year-ago quarter, but the company noted that figure included a $201 million tax benefit. Keysight reported communications solutions group’s revenues of $442 million were down 2% from the year-ago period. The segment generated $1.8 billion in revenue for fiscal 2016, up from $1.7 billion during fiscal 2015. Meanwhile, Keysight’s electronic industrial solutions segment generated $776 million in revenue for the year, up 1% from the prior year. Its Services Solutions Group saw fourth-quarter revenues rise 5% year-over-year to a new record of $108 million.
Viavi Solutions also recently reported results, which included a year-over-year drop in revenues. The company’s net revenues for its first fiscal quarter were down more than 8% year-over-year and dropped sequentially as well, to $210.8 million. While Viavi said revenues from its service enablement segment (the largest portion of its business) were basically flat at around $118 million for the quarter, its service enablement revenues dropped 24% from the year-ago quarter to $36.4 million. Its optical security and performance products segment saw revenues fall 13% year-over-year to $55.8 million.
Viavi President and CEO Oleg Khaykin noted in a statement the company recently outlined a three-year strategy that included profitability targets. Net income for the most recent quarter was $78 million, compared to a net loss of $15.7 million in the year-ago quarter.
“We plan to continue to strengthen our market leadership in NE along with a more focused, scaled down SE,” Khaykin added. “In OSP, we plan to leverage our optical coatings technologies into new markets while maintaining our leadership position in the core anti-counterfeiting business.”
In other test news:
–ThinkRF released its latest analysis software that runs on a Windows-based computer and provides an advanced user interface for its WSA5000 compact, real-time spectrum analyzer. The company said the new S240 software has a more intuitive user interface, and can measure up to 100 megahertz in real-time bandwidth across a frequency range from 100 kHz up to 27 GHz.
–GL Communications added new features to its MAPS diameter protocol emulator, with the solution now supporting the Rx interface for dynamic quality of service and charging service information exchange. MAPS Diameter is said to simulate network elements to test Rx interface functionality.
-Electronic design automation software company Mentor Graphics launched a new solution this week aimed at test automation for analog or mixed-signal integrated circuits. Its Tessent DefectSim is said to measure the defect coverage of any test applied to the circuit so more effective tests can be selected and reduce the overall total simulation time “by many orders of magnitude,” according to the company. Tessent is said to address the needs of ICs for the automotive market, according to Mentor, as it can measure a circuit’s ability to stay operational in spite of defects, which has a direct impact on reliability over time.
Wim Dobbelaere, director of test and product engineering at ON Semiconductor, said in a statement that “in mixed-signal automotive ICs, about 80% of the defects found in returned ICs are in the analog circuitry. The quality of analog circuitry is traditionally guaranteed using functional tests while the fault coverage remains unknown. A few years ago, we identified several ways to improve defect coverage of analog tests but the main gap towards improvement was the absence of an automated fault simulation tool.”
Dobbelaere added that ON Semiconductor collaborated with Mentor as it developed the new DefectSim product and that ON “evaluated the tool on several automotive ICs and concluded it is a highly-automated and flexible solution that guides improvements in test and design-for-test techniques and allows us to measurably improve the defect coverage of analog tests.”
Mentor Graphics reported this week it is being acquired by Siemens for $4.5 billion.
-Also in the automotive IC space, Synopsys said its IC test solution is being deployed by automotive semiconductor suppliers including Elmos Semiconductor, MegaChips, Micronas, Renesas Electronics and Toshiba. Meeting automotive quality requirements means IC suppliers are asked to have less than one defective part per 1 million. Synopsys said its IC testing is helping “to meet automotive test goals in less time and at lower cost for millions of shipped ICs.”
–NI is helping to enable a new channel emulation testbed called Colosseum, which is set to be central to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Spectrum Collaboration Challenge launched earlier this year.
The Colosseum channel emulation testbed is based on the Universal Software Radio Peripheral X310 software-defined radio and NI’s ATCA-3671 FPGA processes system, with NI contributing USRP software-defined radios. The testbed will be located at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and designed to support remote access for wireless research. It will support up to 256-by-256-channel, real-time channel emulation. NI said the testbed will be able to calculate more than 65,000 channel interactions at up to 80 megahertz of real-time bandwidth per channel.
–NTS recently opened a new, 40,000-square foot test facility in Chicago. NTS Chicago’s test equipment includes a 5 meter semi-anechoic chamber, three additional semi-anechoic chambers designed to meet military specifications and a reverberation chamber for high intensity radiated field testing.
