Bernstein: Bernstein raises Advantest tester demand forecast as CPUs and ASICs open up room for growth

How much was the tester demand forecast raised?

Bernstein raised its forecast for demand for Advantest SoC testers in the fiscal year ending March 2029 from 4,410 units to 8,042 units, an increase of 82%; its forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2028 rose from 3,902 units to 5,738 units.
Of the 8,042 units forecast, approximately 6,000 are for GPUs, ASICs and CPUs, while another approximately 900 come from testing co-packaged optics (CPO) and networking equipment. The firm also counts the latter as AI-related demand, bringing the total to approximately 6,900 units.
The model measures demand in EXA Scale-equivalent units and is based primarily on chip shipments and test times: when chips take longer to test, more testing equipment is needed to support the same output.

Bernstein expects ASIC testing demand to account for approximately 37% of AI accelerator testing demand as early as 2027, comparable to GPUs. The drivers include both a greater number of chips and longer testing times per chip; the firm expects ASIC shipments to reach 18 million chips by 2028.
Taking Google's TPU as an example, the firm estimates that in 2026, the v8i's test time is approximately 3 times that of the previous-generation v7; in 2027, the v9i's test time could rise further to 3–4 times that of the v8i. More logic chips and more complex packaging increase testing intensity.
The boost from GPUs does not grow evenly every year: the firm believes Rubin's test time is only approximately 30% higher than its predecessor's, so Advantest's revenue from Nvidia declines slightly this year; the next major jump in test time is expected with Feynman in 2028.
Not all industry demand for ASIC testing translates into Advantest orders: the report notes that Advantest does not test Amazon AWS's AI chips.

Bernstein believes AI agents need CPUs to coordinate task steps, tool calls and result processing, driving demand for more server CPUs and higher performance. The firm expects server CPU shipments to rise from approximately 30 million chips in 2025 to 57 million chips in 2028.
Test times may also increase as chips become more complex. The firm estimates that the Vera CPU, which uses a chiplet architecture and CoWoS packaging, takes approximately 3 times as long to test as its predecessor, Grace.
Advantest is a major supplier of testing equipment to the AMD and Arm camps. Intel currently uses an internal testing solution, so gains in server CPU share by AMD and Arm would expand the market addressable by external testing equipment suppliers; a shift by Intel to an external platform would provide an additional opportunity.

Bernstein raised its revenue forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2027 by 8% to 1.9039 trillion yen and its operating profit forecast by 14% to 1.0216 trillion yen; for the fiscal year ending March 2028, it raised the forecasts by approximately 31% and 37%, respectively, to 2.763 trillion yen and 1.4855 trillion yen.
According to the report's table, the new operating profit forecasts are approximately 7% and 13% above market consensus, respectively. The firm also raised its price target from 45,800 yen to 55,700 yen and maintained its Outperform rating.
The price target applies a price-to-earnings multiple of 30 times to forecast earnings per share for the 5th through 8th quarters ahead and rolls the valuation window forward by one quarter; the previous multiple was 40 times.