MoCCA – NplusT

The MOCCA (MOst Creative Customer Award) special edition has been bestowed upon Ms. Luisa Fracassini, who is retiring from her “Sustainability & Open Innovation Manager” position at STMicroelectronics.

Throughout her tenure, Ms. Fracassini played a pivotal role in driving numerous joint innovative projects since the early days of NplusT.

Reflecting on this honor, Tamas Kerekes, President and CEO of NplusT, shared his sentiments:

As time flies by, it’s truly remarkable to look back on the journey. My collaboration with Luisa spans over three decades, predating the inception of NplusT. She was driving the burn-in operation at STMicroelectronics, I was working for an equipment building company. Luisa and I collaborated closely to define and implement pioneering burn-in strategies. Remarkably, these strategies continue to exhibit exceptional performance and efficiency even today. Upon founding NplusT, our collaboration flourished further, culminating in the successful execution of numerous projects. One standout example is the implementation of a centralized system for monitoring a few pieces of equipment within her reliability lab. Evolving over time, this initiative has grown to encompass hundreds of equipment across multiple labs, all seamlessly integrated into a sophisticated workflow management software. Luisa, your foresight, unwavering commitment to achieving results, and invaluable contributions have been instrumental in our growth and success.

Eng. Luisa Fracassini comments the award :

Time flies when you’re doing something engaging and living it with good companions on the journey. And so, just a few months into my retirement, I find myself reflecting on my life since I, a young electronic engineer full of enthusiasm and curiosity, joined ST. Back then, I was working in testing and burn-in, collaborating with an Italian company that was a cradle for many young talents. In particular, I formed a spontaneous bond with a Hungarian engineer—friendly, knowledgeable, calm, but determined. You’ve probably guessed it was Tamas Kerekes. We shared many things besides technology: rock music, knowledge of Hungary – which I traveled extensively by motorcycle – but most of all, a certain way of looking at the world of work, both present and future.
Time passed. I moved on from testing to creating, organizing, and managing four quality laboratories: Reliability, Metrology, ESD, and Design Validation, filled with expensive, diverse, and incompatible machines that were vital for qualifying new products. Meanwhile, the young Hungarian engineer and a valuable companion, Nicoletta Casini, embarked on a great challenge: to start their own company specializing in design and software solutions, N plus T. So, it was only natural to entrust them with the task of developing a powerful and flexible tool that would connect and make the laboratories’ vast array of machines remotely accessible, efficient, and more productive, thereby improving the output, quality, and reliability of the labs, while reducing time and costs. Thus, through work meetings, a rock album by Lokomotív, a glass of Tokaji, a visit to Narni, and a few pats on our four-legged friends, SIREN was born. It gradually became a powerful and reliable tool thanks to the close collaboration between Tamas, his skilled team, and those who worked with me and after me on the system.
When I shifted my professional focus to Sustainable Development and Open Innovation, my contacts with NplusT became less frequent, but not the respect and friendship with Nicoletta and Tamas. The announcement of the MoCCA Career award honors and moves me. It will be one of the precious memories I will carry with me forever.

As a tradition spanning more than a decade, NplusT assigned the MOCCA award also in 2023, honoring the user of NplusT products and services demonstrating the highest creativity, imagination, and dedication.

This year, the award was granted to the team of Weebit Nano, a provider of ReRAM non-volatile memory (NVM) technology, for their introduction of the TESTMESH TMA-100 NVM characterization equipment in their workflow. The Weebit team includes: Ori Livne, Director of Testing; Alessandro Bricalli PhD, R&D Engineer; Giuseppe Piccolboni PhD, R&D Engineer; and Matan Guttman, Test Engineer.

Tamás Kerekes, President and CEO of NplusT:

I have been following Weebit Nano since their very early days and I was impressed by how quickly the team was able to bring up a very new, extremely challenging technology. I am happy to support the company on their path to success. Weebit Nano is among the first users of our latest non-volatile memory characterization equipment, TESTMESH TMA-100, and certainly the first to apply it across multiple stages of technology development, from basic test devices to complex modules with embedded micro and digital interface. I am looking forward to continuing being part of Weebit Nano’s technology evaluation process.

Ilan Sever, VP of R&D, of Weebit Nano:

When developing a new memory technology like Weebit ReRAM, selecting the best testing and characterization solutions is a priority. We are delighted to partner with the team at NplusT, making its TESTMESH TMA-100 a key part of our flow. Together we designed the software, load boards and probe cards, going deep into every technical aspect.
At Weebit Nano, our products often have distinct working methodologies, and the TMA-100 easily accommodates these different procedures. This includes for example the ability to easily collaborate on the same platform with our R&D partner CEA-Leti.
Across our developments, the TMA-100 has saved us a lot of time and effort through product flexibility, the ability to reuse past developments, and the close support we receive from NplusT.

Weebit’s Ori Livne (left) and Matan Guttman (right) with the TESTMESH TMA-100

The MOCCA 2021 has been assigned to the TenaFe NAND Characterization Team, lead by Curry Zhang & Sean Huang.
NplusT grants MOCCA (MOst Creative Customer Award) to users of NplusT products and services who leverage the most of the features and performance of such products making use of innovative approaches.

Tamas Kerekes, President and CEO of NplusT:
“I am really happy to see the level of understanding of the NAND, what Tenafe reached using NanoCycler. Curry with his team have developed a powerful infrastructure on top of the API provided with NanoCycler, and are using it efficiently to generate the necessary data and knowledge. This is the first time that MOCCA goes to China – I am extremely pleased about that, as I see a very fast evolution in technology and knowledge. The Chinese storage industry is evolving very fast, it is one of our strategic market targets: today we have several users of our products and technologies in China.

Curry Zhang, Senior Validation Manager of TenaFe:
“We’ve used NplusT NanoCycler for over 2 years, with the main purpose of NAND characterization, collecting data for our media management algorithm. As an SSD controller company, we need to adopt NAND from different vendors. Although we have our own controller and silicon, NanoCycler is still very helpful as a 3rd party tool. We use it frequently, every month, almost every week, for these reasons:

It has powerful NAND command API: we can development testsuites on top of; and it is flexible enough to support all kinds of NAND. When we get a new NAND, we only need 1 or 2 days to bring it up on NanoCycler, then we can start collecting the data we want;
It is very stable, we usually run it for weeks;
It has its own temperature control system, which is very impressive: we can easily and automatically control NAND temperature as whatever we want, for example erase and program in 30°C, read in 70°C, and we don’t even need to have a chamber to do so;
Within the last 2 years, we finished NAND characterization of more than 8 different NAND types from various vendors;

Last thing and most importantly, engineers of NplusT are nice and professional: we communicated a lot and they always gave us quick responses and an efficient support.”

Every year, NplusT assigns the MOCCA (MOst Creative Customer Award) to those users, whose innovative applications and solutions enhance the utilization and performance of NplusT products. The year 2020 MOCCA has been assigned to Niccolò Castellani, R&D Engineer at CEA-LETI, Grenoble, for developing a software platform for the automation of non-volatile memory test flow execution on NplusT’s test equipment.

Tamas Kerekes, President and CEO of NplusT:
“I am really happy to see the way how Niccolò and the LETI team approached their specific requirements. The software framework, which Niccolò has created on top of the execution environment of the tester, enables the easy development of characterization programs for a wide range of novel, emerging non-volatile memory technologies. We plan to continue supporting LETI, providing innovative test platforms which enable fast and accurate measurements, contributing to develop high-performance, low-power, reliable storage devices.”

Niccolo Castellani, R&D engineer at CEA-Leti:
“I started this project a couple of years ago, having already experienced test developing and data analysis for research and industrial requirements. I’ve been always convinced about the real need of versatility for the R&D of merging memories testing. Only NplusT was able to provide the right tools and the right support team to accomplish my objective: a hardware to user interface getting plug-and-play new designs and new algorithms in its environment. I’m willing to continue this great collaboration.”

The MOCCA 2019 (MOst Creative Customer Award) was assigned to Nellina Mautone, appreciating her activities in flash data analysis using BarnieMAT.

Tamás Kerekes, President and CEO of NplusT:
“We are really appreciating the cooperation with Nellina and with the entire Infineon team.
The developed toolset, based on our BarnieMAT technology, is an excellent example of efficient management of large quantities of data aimed at extracting and presenting information in a way that is intelligible to the human brain, in order to reach faster and safer decisions. Infineon is also an important partner in the definition of the product roadmap, asking for new features according to the changing needs of the user community.”

Nellina Mautone, Staff Engineer of Infineon Technologies:
“When we started our project around a year ago, one of our main challenges was the application of BarnieMAT, until then used for technology analysis, in a different environment for processing manufacturing data. Our team, which involves several students and benefits from the expertise of Mr. Rudolf Ullmann (Lead Principal Engineer of Infineon Technologies Munich), needed and continues to need more features and better performance.
The integration with an external Python-based data processing environment is an answer to ever-challenging demands, and proved to be an enabler of our work. We see BarnieMAT as a well-structured and well-supported tool, matching our requirements and ensuring the maturity which allows us to focus on our analysis tasks.”

The MOCCA 2018 (“MOst Creative Customer Award”) has been assigned to the GAMAX team, appreciating more than ten years of intense cooperation in the software development arena. GAMAX provides a continuous support – based on outstanding knowledge and on innovative technology – and many of NplusT products embed GAMAX code. From 2018, GAMAX is also using NplusT array data analysis software tools which, integrated with MATLAB, opens the gate to new applications on regular structures.

Tamás Kerekes, President and CEO of NplusT:“GAMAX is the ideal partner in co-development of our software. Their quality and reaction time when support is needed is excellent. I am particularly pleased about GAMAX innovative attitude and the way they introduce new technologies without raising the risk factor. Last year we worked with GAMAX also in the opposite way, transferring our array data analysis technology to them and I can say this was the fastest and most efficient introduction of the toolset since we market it.”

Géza Homonnay, Managing Director of GAMAX: “We are proud to receive this MOCCA award from one of our most important partners, showing our ability to fulfill interesting challenges. We have been active in software development and other software related activities during the last 30 years. Having received similar acknowledgement from Microsoft for software localization, from Oracle for software consulting and from MathWorks for software distribution, we will be strengthening our efforts to serve our valued partners the best possible way.”

The yearly MOCCA (MOst Creative Customer Award), recognising the user with the highest contribution in the application of NplusT tools, was assigned to the STMicroelectronics Team lead by Luisa Fracassini and composed of Domenico Ausilio, Andrea Boroni, Emanuele Capitanio and Sergio Pozzi from QMS, CSR & Central Labs department.

As a result of development and evolution of the software tool SIREN, built on NplusT LabVisor technology, hundreds of equipment and instrumentation installed in several Qualification and Validation laboratories are being taken under control. SIREN today serves a large community of users in their daily tasks such as monitoring, booking, maintenance and utilization statistics.

MoCCA 2016 - ST Microelectronics

Since we started the project, I was always impressed by the strong focus of the team to create a tool which is really useable and used. Continuous new ideas of improvement and extension – together with active cooperation in the development – helped to obtain the status that today SIREN is one of the software tools created by NplusT which is the most extensively used.
Tamas Kerekes, President and CEO of NplusT

SIREN has been conceived since the beginning as a growing tool with the ambitious purpose to arrive finally to manage with a single system multiple and heterogeneous Electrical Qualification and Validation laboratories. This long term vision target could be achievable only with a deep, side by side interaction and cooperation between various ST entities and NplusT, working on the development of one step in an optic of compatibility with the future ones.
Luisa Fracassini, QMS, CSR & Central Labs Manager, STMicroelectronics

MOCCA Career awarded to Luisa Fracassini

MOCCA 2023 awarded to Weebit Nano

MoCCA 2021 – TenaFe

MoCCA 2020 – CEA-LETI

MoCCA 2019 – INFINEON

MoCCA 2018 – GAMAX

MoCCA 2016 – STMicroelectronics

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