Completely agree, the industry is very commoditized, and like all SEMIs very cyclical. Build new capacity, buy test, dry-spell, repeat. Had to fill-out the bottom-line with CMOS testing, etc.
He was building commercial testers, Sytest and then Nextest, and given the cyclical nature, the consolidation in the industry circa 2008 when Teradyne swallowed Eagle & Nextest makes sense. I'll read up on ONFI - any specifics you're curious about I can ask him directly...