Industry News, Trends and Technology, and Standards Updates

Note: this will be the last blog published on cimetrix.com. For all future blogs, please visit our blog on PDF Solutions website.

Background

The SEMI North America, the Information & Control Committee meets three times per year, but this year the schedule is changed due to the SEMICON West  biennial  relocation to Phoenix beginning this year. SEMI held summer meetings in North America on June 2-4 at SEMI headquarters in Milpitas, CA. Like usual, the meetings are hybrid where attendees can join in person or remotely. The first two days are task force meetings including the GEM 300, ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration), GUI, CDS (Fab & Equipment Computer & Device Security ) and DDA (Diagnostics Data Acquisition) task forces with Cimetrix task force leaders. The third day is the committee meeting where final decisions are made (usually) based on task force recommendations. This is a summary of what happened in some of the task forces and the committee meeting.

Note that all ballots that pass in the committee are still subject to a final review by the global SEMI Audit & Review committee, where a ballot technically can still fail when proper SEMI procedures and regulations are not strictly followed. This is rare in the North America Information & Control Committee but can happen and has happened.

A SNARF is a Standards New Activity Report Form. Before a task force can submit a ballot proposing a new standard or to modify an existing standard, the SNARF for this work must be approved by the technical committee.

Note that SEMI publishes a website with all global committee information where anyone can peruse the extensive details. It is at this website: https://www.semi.org/en/products-services/standards/developing-technical-standards.

Leadership Changes

Several leadership changes were approved during these meetings. For the last several years, Brian Rubow has been vice-chair of SEMI North America (NA) RSC Organization. During the NARSC meeting, Brian was nominated as co-chair. Alan Weber was nominated as co-leader of the Equipment Data Publication task force and co-leader of the Fab & Equipment Computer & Device Security Task Forces.

GEM 300 Task Force
Several weeks prior to meeting, Brian submitted a SNARF to the GEM 300 task force members for review. The SNARF proposes developing a new standard that enables secure GEM interface communication using gRPC technology and TLS. The new standard would be an alternative to the existing SECS-I and HSMS protocols used today. Neither of today’s protocols are secure and therefore present a cybersecurity risk. Feedback on the proposed SNARF indicates clear approval that we need a secure GEM protocol. However, the means to achieve security is still up for debate. Alternatives to gRPC offered by task force members include HTTP/2, WebSockets and secure TCP/IP communication. We discussed this a little at the task force meeting and plan to start meeting regularly to discuss and debate the alternatives until a technical solution is selected. We also decided to postpone approving any SNARF for this work until we decided on a technical direction. The addition of a secure protocol will be the big improvement to the GEM standard. Anyone interested in this topic should join the North America GEM 300 task force. The task force approved to work on ballots to modify the well-known implementations in four standards, E30 (GEM), E40 (Process Job Management), E87 (Carrier Management) and E90 (Substrate Tracking). In GEM, we wish to clarify the well-known naming for the Processing State Model collection events. Since every equipment can implement a unique Processing State Model tailored to its operation, the number and name of the Processing State Model collection events vary. We expect each of these ballots to be relatively small. The task force is also working on another ballot (7345) for the E90 (Substrate Tracking) standard related to batch processing. The current E90 standard is unclear how to report when batches are assembled and disassembled. The batch location state model has contradictions between the batch location states OCCUPIED and UNOCCUPIED and the transition tables. The ballot proposes a solution to the contradiction and additional collection events for batch assembly and disassembly. This ballot is ready for review by task force members and will be submitted for voting in the next voting cycle.

DDA (Diagnostics Data Acquisition) Task Force

The DDA task force remains very active while trying to finalize the EDA (Equipment Data Acquisition/Interface A) freeze 3 standards. All activities are focused on this goal. Ballot 7321A proposes changes to the core EDA standards, E120/E120.2, E125/E125.2, E132/E132.2, E134/E134.2 and E179. This ballot intends to be the final ballot for Freeze 3 for these core standards. It introduces one new feature, filtering E125 metadata to allow clients to request a subset of the equipment metadata when calling GetParameters, GetExceptions, and GetSimpleEvents. The other proposed changes reflect issues raised by task force members. These issues were raised either during the last vendor test session or since then as software development teams implement EDA Freeze 3 software. Both line items in the ballot failed and will be reworked for voting in Cycle 7 and adjudicated at SEMICON West in October. By failing the ballot, we can resolve the issues reported in ballot 7321B and resolve a few more issues reported since ballot 7321A was submitted. The final piece to EDA Freeze 3 is an update to the E164 standard (Specification for EDA Common Metadata). This ballot also failed and will be reworked for the next voting cycle. When these ballots (7321 and 7180) are approved and published by SEMI, we expect EDA Freeze 3 to be complete. Then we will modify standard E178 (Guide for EDA Freeze Version) to officially declare the EDA Freeze 3 version. In addition to this work, the DDA Task Force is also working on subordinate standards to E164. Each subordinate standard will standardize EDA metadata for one GEM-based standard, standardizing how to implement that standard in an EDA interface. The subordinate standard for E40 (process job management) is nearly ready for task force review. This work is outside the scope of EDA Freeze 3, only applicable when you implement the respective standard, but still directly related to EDA Freeze 3. This constitutes the bulk of remaining work.

ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration) Task Force

The ABFI task for approved a SNARF to work on E142 to resolve some editorial changes and to add well-knowns to the subordinate standard E142.4. The task force is also working on a ballot to update the recently published E192 Guide for Equipment Adoption Criteria for GEM and GEM-Related Standards. Since this guide was published, two new standards related to GEM were published including the new Cybersecurity standard E191 and a new equipment data publication standard E190. This ballot has been submitted to the task force for review and will be submitted to SEMI in the next voting cycle.

CDS (Fab & Equipment Computer & Device Security) Task Force

SEMI standard E191 Specification for Computing Device Cybersecurity Status Reporting was published less than a year ago. The current version requires a GEM interface to publish two status variables to identify operating system information about the equipment’s factory facing computers. One identifies the computers, the other identifies the operating system manufacturer, name, version and build information. This helps factories identify cybersecurity risks within the factory and request upgrades. Ballot 7311A proposed to enhance the E191 standard by publishing additional information, introducing two additional status variables. One identifies the list of installed updates. The other identifies installed operating system components. This ballot passed and now awaits review by the Audit & Review committee before publication.

Next Steps

The North America Information & Control Committee will use SEMI voting Cycle 7 for the next round of ballots. Ballots are due to SEMI by Thursday, July 24 2025. These ballots will be adjudicated at SEMICON West October 6-8 at the Phoenix Convention Center.

Background

The SEMI North America, the Information & Control Committee meets three times per year, but this year the schedule is changed due to the SEMICON West semiannual relocation to Phoenix beginning this year. SEMI held winter meetings in North America on February 24-26 at SEMI headquarters in Milpitas, CA. Like usual, meetings are hybrid where attendees can join in person or remotely. The meetings include task forces with leaders from Cimetrix on the GEM 300, ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration), GUI, and DDA task forces as well as the committee meeting on Wednesday. This is a summary of what happened in the task forces including GEM 300, ABFI and DDA and other task force activities. There were few ballots this last cycle, but I will also include updates from the Fall meetings in 2024 since I did not create a blog for those meetings.

Note that all ballots that pass in the committee are still subject to a final review by the global SEMI Audit & Review committee, where a ballot technically can still fail when proper SEMI procedures and regulations are not strictly followed. This is rare in the North America Information & Control Committee but can happen.

I also wish to note that SEMI publishes a website with all global committee information where anyone can peruse the extensive details. It is at this website: https://www.semi.org/en/products-services/standards/developing-technical-standards.

GEM300 Task Force

The most recent changes to the GEM and GEM 300 standards include the addition of ‘well-known’ names for all required collection events, alarms, data variables, status variables and equipment constants within each standard. Recent ballots are related to fixing a few errors in these new tables and updates based on other ballots. This work is finally done for the core standards. Next step in this long process is to update the EDA (Interface A) E164 standard and new subordinate standard to require use of these well-knowns and also to update the SEMI E172 SEDD standard to require use of the well-known names in equipment SEDD files. This has taken a couple years to develop, but ultimately will be extremely useful to quickly map host software applications to implementations, both for EDA and GEM interfaces, and to identify GEM data in EDA implementations. Quicker mapping means quicker equipment integration at the factory.

Last fall, the GEM 300 task force passed some minor updates to the E90 substrate tracking standard in ballot 7278. This includes adding a couple new variables related to the substrate attributes not previously called out specifically yet were added more for completeness than usefulness. This winter, another E90 ballot 7316 passed that corrected a long existing spelling inconsistency for variables between E90 and E90.1. This should not affect implementations, yet some implementers may wish to rename a couple of variables in their implementations to match the standard.

Last fall, the GEM 300 task force made similar changes to the E87 carrier management standard in ballot 7279. In addition to adding a few new well-knowns mapping to additional port and carrier attributes, the well-known names for alarms now support port specific alarms. Well-known names were added for the Carrier Complete Prediction state model, recently updated in 2024 with significant changes. Finally, the carrier’s substrate count attribute format was modified from a limiting 1-byte to allowing 4-byte implementations. This is an important improvement for the semiconductor backend industry where there can be hundreds of substrates on a carrier, unlike semiconductor front end where the substrates are typically wafers and limited to 25.

This winter an E157 Module Process Tracking ballot finally passed in its third attempt. This ballot significantly enhanced to support equipment that don’t have a process chamber. The current published standard focuses on reporting recipe execution in a process module, where all the material in the chamber is processed simultaneously. Most importantly, the standard enables reporting when each step in the recipe begins and completes. Many equipment in especially outside of semiconductor front-end don’t have a process module and instead have continuous flow operation. The enhancements to E157 enable reporting the recipe execution on a specific substrate, including when each step begins and completes. This is another example how GEM related standards are adopting to the needs of backend equipment.

Ballot 7312 replaced ballots 7275 and 7276 from the 2024 fall meetings to implement well-known names in SEMI E5, the SECS-II standard. The task force decided to rename E30 well-known names that originate in SEMI E5 with an ‘E5’ prefix instead of ‘E30’. This passed ballot completes the current plans to develop these well-known names in the GEM related standards.

DDA Task Force

Last fall, the DDA task force pass just one ballot. Ballot 7288 resolved a few issues raised by task force members and an update the .proto files to align with the current Protocol Buffers Style Guide. By conforming to the Protocol Buffers Style Guide, gRPC code generators can better adapt to language specific styles.

After the DDA task force met last fall, a group of companies volunteered to test the data collection features using the proposed gRPC interface definitions and updated E134 standard. Previous test sessions had already validated E132 Session Management and E125 Equipment Modeling. A test plan was created and previously distributed to the participants. Attendees alternated connecting with each other’s software as clients and servers and then collecting data. Five companies participated. Twenty-eight issues were submitted of varying severity. Based on this feedback, the DDA task force created ballot 7321 to correct known issues. Since then a few more issues have been reported. The task force ballot failed one of the ballot line items and will resubmit with corrections and a few additional changes for voting in the upcoming cycle. If all goes well, the changes in ballot 7321A will become the core of the EDA Freeze 3 standard. We can hope!

The DDA Task Force is also actively developing a ballot to update SEMI standard E164 which establishes EDA equipment modeling guidelines. New subordinate standards will map GEM 300 standards to a specific EDA freeze 3 implementation based on the well-known items recently defined in the GEM 300 standards and based on the updated primary standard E164 guidelines. This is the final piece to establishing a complete EDA Freeze 3 standard. Client and equipment server implementers can develop software before E164 is finalized.

ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration) Task Force

No ballots were adjudicated in the ABFI task force. Instead, the task force continued several open discussions. We discussed how a ballot from last year was published as a new standard SEMI E192 Guide for Equipment Adoption Criteria for GEM and GEM-Related Standards. The guide was just published in January 2025 and aims to provide a high-level overview and organization of the 40+ GEM related standards and the GEM related 30+ subordinate standards. The guide is meant to introduce the many GEM related standards for newcomers and experts alike. Since the guide was written and now published, several developments have occurred which require the guide to be updated.

• The Computer and Device Security task force in the Information & Control Committee developed a new GEM-related standard, E191.
• The GEM 300 task force expanded the scope for E157 including a title change.
• The Equipment Data Publication task force in the Information & Control Committee developed a new GEM-related standard, E190.

A new ballot was approved to update the SEMI E192 guide with these latest changes.

Additionally, the ABFI task force is planning to update the SEMI E142 substrate map specification to include standardized XY coordinate system mapping.

CDS (Computer & Device Security) Task Force

The CDS task force is actively updated SEMI standard E191, the Specification for Computing Device Cybersecurity Status Reporting. This new standard defines standard status variables on a GEM interface regarding the operating system for each computer in the equipment, such as the name, version and build of the operating system. This enables factories to track the operating systems on the computers and compare this with any known vulnerabilities and request equipment computer patches and upgraded. The standard will be updated to provide more information, although the additional data is not yet completely decided.

Information & Control Committee

A new order of business was introduced in the Information & Control Committee by representatives from the Physical Interfaces and Carriers committee. Our two committees share control of the SEMI standard E84 the Specification for Enhanced Carrier Handoff Parallel I/O interface. Some users are interested in developing a new TCP/IP based protocol be introduced to replace the parallel I/O interface. The discussions are preliminary just seeking interested parties at this time.

To learn more about the SEMI standards, the committees or just to speak with an expert please click the button below. 

Earlier this quarter (16-18 April 2024) Alan Weber and Jon Holt were privileged to deliver the 3-hour tutorial that always precedes the opening session of the annual European Advanced Process Control and Manufacturing (APC|M) Conference. This year’s conference was held in Hamburg, Germany and again co-located with the Smart Systems Integration (SSI) Conference and attracted more than 200 participants across the industry and around the globe.

In a slight break with tradition, rather than diving deeply into one or two APC-specific technologies, Alan and Jon took a broader perspective, covering a wide range of topics that are germane to production implementations of APC and related advanced manufacturing applications. The rationale for this approach is that APC can no longer be considered a standalone suite of applications, but an integral part of an increasingly complex factory information and control system. As a result, APC practitioners should have at least a working knowledge of these necessary complementary technologies.

Against this backdrop, the theme of the tutorial was “Smart Manufacturing System Engineering for Semiconductor Factories;” the target audience included APC and smart manufacturing application developers, system engineers, and managers; and the only prerequisites were a keen interest in improving semiconductor manufacturing capability and control and a desire to understand the broader context of APC.

The session covered a broad range of topics at limited depth to give participants an understanding of how APC and other smart manufacturing applications work together in a production environment. It identified shared requirements such as data sources, standards, implementation technologies, and other system architectural elements that offer a unified perspective on this overall domain. Finally, it listed sources of information for those wanting to explore these topics in more depth.

We were fortunate to have about 120 participants in the tutorial and received positive feedback about the choice of topics and quality of the material. Alan and Jon “tag teamed” the topics shown on the agenda slide below and could have continued for another couple of hours given the attendees’ level of interest. 

A number of participants were especially appreciative of the industry history section, which emphasized how relatively young the semiconductor manufacturing industry is, and how rapidly it has evolved through global collaboration on the development of device and manufacturing technologies, enabling industry standards, and business models.

Other areas of high interest included (with presentation excerpts):

• Manufacturing applications that often co-exist with mainstream APC applications…

• Use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in a real production setting

• Other implementation technologies that support manufacturing at the gigafab scale

• Key enabling industry standards for all the above, especially data collection and traceability

Even though there is no substitute for being present at an interactive tutorial like this one, If you would like access to some or all of this material, please contact us at by clicking the button below, and we’ll be happy to share and discuss it with you. Who knows… perhaps as a result we’ll see you at next year’s Europe APCM conference.

Next year’s conference will be 10-12 April 2025 in Prague (Czech Republic), so mark your calendars and plan to spend a few informative days in one of Europe’s most iconic cities! And for you music lovers… come early and/or stay after – you won’t regret it.

Background

The SEMI North America Information & Control Committee meets three times per year; spring, summer and fall. This year the spring meetings were held on March 25, 26, and 27 at SEMI headquarters in Milpitas, CA. The meetings include task forces with leaders from Cimetrix on the GEM 300, ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration), GUI, DDA, CDS task forces as well as the committee meeting, held on Wednesday. This is a summary of what happened in the task forces I am highly involved in, including GEM 300, ABFI and DDA. There were few ballots this last cycle, especially compared to the last meetings.  

Note that all ballots that pass in the committee are still subject to a final review by the global SEMI Audit & Review committee, where a ballot can still fail when proper SEMI procedures and regulations are not strictly followed. This is rare in the North America Information & Control Committee but can happen. 

GEM 300 Task Force

Ballot 6836A was modified to address issues raised by several voting members at the fall meetings. In this round of voting, the ballot passed with no rejecting votes and some minor comments from me. Ballot 6836A modifies both specifications E87 Carrier Management and E90 Substrate Tracking. In Substrate Tracking, the substrate object now defines a new optional attribute, “AdditionalInfo”. This attribute is used to designate a list of name/value pair information to be used as needed. The existence of the attribute is standardized, but the usage and values for the names in the name/value pair are custom to be used as needed. For example, an equipment handling multiple substrate types can use a name/value pair to distinguish between the different substrate types. In Carrier Management, carrier objects now define a related new optional attribute “AdditionalSubstrateInfoMap” to store the list of name/value pair information for all substrates in a carrier. These new features enable GEM 300 like E90 and E87 standards to be more easily adapted to all types of equipment and applications.

The Japan GEM 300 task force has proposed ballot 7173 to make minor improvements to the text in the GEM E30 standard. The proposed changes have been submitted to other regions including North America for review. None of the changes are technically significant and should not affect existing GEM implementations.

A few new ideas for ballots were also discussed at the task force. Following are some details on two items that were discussed.

The most prominent new discussion proposes changes to the E157 Specification for Module Process Tracking. Currently, adoption for this standard is limited to equipment that have one or more well-defined or virtual process modules. There are many types of equipment outside of Semiconductor Front-End that do not have a clear concept of a process module like equipment with conveyors moving substrates through the equipment. The new ballot would propose modifications to E157 to define a new, similar state model that can be adapted to report processing details for a substrate rather than a process module. This continues a trend at SEMI to make changes to allow for easier GEM adoption in other industries and more types of equipment.

Another ballot proposes some changes to the new ‘well-known’ subordinate standards to the GEM and GEM 300 standards that establishes standardized names for the alarms, data variables, collection events, status variables and equipment constants required by these standards. While these new subordinate standards have not yet been published, a couple changes are under consideration soon once they are published.

DDA (Diagnostics Data Acquisition) Task Force

• Ballot 7174 was approved to update E128 Specification for SML Message Structures with language to include Transport Layer Security (TLS) because Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) has been deprecated by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). E128 is a key standard in Equipment Data Acquisition communication freeze 1 and 2.
• Ballot 7175 was proposed to update E132 Specification for Equipment Client Authentication and Authorization and the E132 gRPC implementation with several issues found while preparing for EDA Vender Test #2.
  • Line item #1 introduced the most significant change; a modification to the password hash algorithm to be a binary array instead of a string. A binary array is more appropriate due to the software hash functions available to programmers. This line item failed due to a technical error in the ballot. The line item will be reworked to resolve this technical mistake and other errors that were revealed later in the week during EDA Vender Test #2.
  • Line item #2 moves some requirements from E134 to E132 in cooperation with ballot 7176. This ballot adds the requirements to E132 and passed.  
• Ballot 7176 was approved to move requirements from E134 Specification for Data Collection Management to E132 in cooperation with ballot 7175 line item #2. This ballot removes the requirements from E134. 
• Ballot 7191 approved changes to E179 Specification for Protocol Buffers Common Components. The ballot primarily introduces some optimizations to the protocol buffer usage to avoid sending parameter type information twice. This affects both ParameterValueType and ArrayParameterValue in the protocol buffer implementation. The changes also clarify the handling of 1, 2 and 4-byte integers by separating into unique types in E179. 
• A software vender test #2 was held on the day following the North America Information & Control Spring meetings. Anyone implementing client and/or server software was invited to attend. Instead of testing for standard compliance, the purpose of the vender test was to test interoperability and flush out any remaining issues in the EDA freeze 3 standards. This software vender test session #2 focused on previously untested E132 features from software vender test session #1 and will also include E125 tests. Several companies including Cimetrix attended the vender test session, providing both client and server functionality for testing against each other. Although official results of the test have not yet been made public, the primary issue discovered is that the password hash algorithm needs to be clarified. 
• A software vender test session #3 will be held either immediately following the North America Information & Control Summer meetings held in conjunction with SEMICON West in July, or after the Fall meetings in November. This test session will focus on E134 testing. Mid-April the task force will decide when to proceed.
• Future ballots were proposed for E125, E134, and E179 without specific known issues. In addition to the open ballot for E132, the task force can handle making any last minute changes to the EDA standards before EDA freeze 3 is declared.

ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration) Task Force

No ballots were adjudicated in the ABFI task force. Instead, the task force conducted several open discussions. 

• A ballot has been approved to proposed modifications to E90 Specification for Substrate Tracking to accommodate equipment that have multiple substrate ID readers. Currently E90 assumes that an equipment only has one type of substrate and therefore one substrate ID reader. As the GEM 300 standards are implemented on more backend equipment, issues like this are revealed and need a standardized resolution.
• A previous proposal, 6840, to create a Specification for Equipment Adoption Criteria for GEM and GEM-Based Standards was cancelled. In its place a new proposal was approved to create a Guide for Equipment Adoption Criteria for GEM and GEM-Based Standards. A guide differs from a specification because it does not include any requirements. The new guide will help anyone implementing GEM technology understand how the vast number of GEM related standards fit together and when they should be used.
• A new activity was introduced to consider handling substrates with topside and bottom-side identification. More to come as the task force investigates this further. 
  
  

SEMICON West 2024

The next North America Information and Control meetings will be held in conjunction with SEMICON West in San Francisco. The dates will be July 9-11, 2024. Due to the association with SEMICON West, these meeting typically have the most in person attendees.

Background

The SEMI North America, the Information & Control Committee meets three times per year; spring summer and fall. This year the fall meetings were held on November 6, 7 and 8, 2023 at SEMI headquarters in Milpitas, CA. The meetings include task forces with leaders from Cimetrix on the GEM 300, ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration), GUI, DDA, CDS task forces as well as the committee meeting on the final day which was held on Thursday instead of the typical Wednesday. This is a summary of what happened in the task forces I am highly involved in including GEM 300, ABFI and DDA. The recent voting cycle included 22 ballots—the most ballots in one voting cycle that we have seen for a very long time.  

Note that all ballots that pass in the committee are still subject to a final review by the global SEMI Audit & Review committee, where a ballot can still fail when proper SEMI procedures and regulations are not strictly followed. 

GEM 300 Task Force

A lot is going on the GEM 300 task force. The following SEMI standards were reapproved: E39 and E39.1. Reapprovals occur every 5 years else a standard becomes inactive.  

Ballot 7066A proposed changes to the SEMI E87 Carrier Management Services (CMS) standard. This ballot failed previous voting, but now time passed as a ‘superclean’ ballot (no negatives or comments during voting). This ballot included a significant change to the Carrier Ready to Unload Prediction feature which is now called a Carrier Complete Prediction. Anyone who implemented Carrier Ready to Unload Prediction will have to make a lot of changes to comply with the new implementation. A primary driver for this change is to accommodate internal buffer equipment where the READY TO UNLOAD state depends on when the host sends a CarrierOut message and the queue of previously requested activities; therefore, not a useful prediction to make. 

The benefit of this new state model is to notify the factory host before a carrier is completed so that the automatic delivery can be scheduled to arrive for pickup when the carrier is ready. This can shorten the time it takes for the factory to move material from one equipment to the next. 

Seven similar ballots 7114, 7115, 7116, 7117, 7118, 7119 and 7120 were submitted respectively for standards E5/E30, E40, E87, E90, E94, E116 and E157 to define a ‘well-known name’ for each require collection events, variables and alarms. The ‘well-known’ names are aliases for mapping purposes; necessary because each implementation can use different names. The ultimate goal of this feature is to make the GEM and standards based on GEM more plug-and-play. This new feature serves at least two purposes. Standard E172 already defines a well-known name attribute in the SECS Equipment Data Dictionary (SEDD) file. In the Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA) standard freeze 3 version, E164 will use this well-known name as well. The regular GEM documentation can also reference the well-known name. To explain the value of this feature, E90 requires a collection event for Substrate Location State Model transition 1. Implementers might define this collection event using any name such as E90_Loc_Unoccupied2Occupied, SLTrans1, SubstrateLocationUnoccupiedToOccupied or CollectionEvent901. Any name is allowed. The new well-known name establishes a standardized alias name called the well-known. 

When ballot 7117 is published, the well-known name table establishes well-known name “E90:SubstrateLocation:001:Unoccupied-Occupied” as the standardized alias for this collection event. This SEDD file can be downloaded through the GEM interface, tell the GEM host exactly which collection event implements the Substrate Location State Model transition 1. During the Information & Control Committee, ballot 7117 resulted in a Ratification ballot handling a long existing E90 naming issue for one status variable. All of the other ballots passed with a simple editorial change. 

A few of the above well-known name ballots included additional line items to resolve issues in the respective standard, mostly editorial or minor. Ballot 7114 included an E5 clarification that Stream 21 Function 17/18 sequence can be aborted by the receiving entity with an S21F0 message. Ballot 7116 included several additional changes/corrections to E87. 

1.    Clarification on the CARRIER SLOT MAP STATUS state SLOT MAP VERIFICATION FAILED, which sometimes was spelled in E87 without the ‘ED’ in FAILED. 
2.    Corrections to Table R1-21 in the table heading.

3.    Carrier object attribute Capacity can now be format code 51, 52 or 54, increasing the allowed carrier size from 255 to 4.29 GB to accommodate carriers not holding wafers but smaller substrates. 
4.    Carrer state model transition 7 includes a new trigger as already described scenario R1-21. 
5.    Scenario R1-20 was reverted to its original design, undoing an error introduced in 2012

6.    And finally, equipment constant BypassReadID was added to E87.1. This equipment constant has been defined in E87 but missing in E87.1

Ballot 9836 proposed some synchronized changes in E87 and E90 to define new name/value pair attributes. The ballot failed due to some limiting details in the value format definition. The ballot intends to allow equipment and factory to agree to using additional substrate content and characteristic information.

The Japan GEM 300 task force is working on improving the GEM E30 standard. The task force proposed a number of minor improvements mostly editorial to clean up several areas with the specification. Although the work was originally proposed to occur in the North America group, the task force decided to handle this ballot in Japan who will meet in December of 2023. Of course, the regional GEM 300 task forces worldwide all share and vote together on all E30 ballots.

DDA (Diagnostics Data Acquisition) Task Force

The DDA task force reapproved three standards: E128, E138 and 145. Additionally, the DDA task force made more plans to complete the Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA) freeze 3 version. Here are the key activities and findings as of today:

• E164 will be modified to incorporate the well-known names from the GEM 300 force. Instead of including all GEM 300 standards directly in the E164 primary standard, each GEM 300 standard will have a smaller, simpler E164 subordinate standards (E164.1, E164.2, …) to define the EDA implementation for that standard. This strategy makes adopting EDA and E164 more flexible to use in industries beyond semiconductor front end equipment.
• Some errors were found in the published .proto files for E132 and E134. New ballots will be submitted as soon as possible to make corrections.
• A software vendor test #2 will be held immediately following the North America Information & Control Spring meetings. Anyone implementing client and/or server software is invited to attend. Instead of testing for standard compliance, the purpose of the vender test is to test interoperability and flush out any remaining issues in the EDA freeze 3 standards. This software vender test session #2 will focus on previously untested E132 features from software vender test session #1 and will also include E125 tests. Anyone interested in joining should contact me (Brian Rubow) or Albert Fuchigami (Brian’s co-leader). Prior to the software vender test session, the task force co-leaders will provide a test plan document and .proto files with corrections in E132 for known issues.
• A software vender test session #3 will be held immediately following the North America Information & Control Summer meetings held in conjunction with SEMICON West. This test session will focus on E134 testing. 

ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration) Task Force

Ratification ballots R2924A and R6925A both passed. This means that the new Consumables and Durables standard is in the SEMI publication queue. 

Additionally, ballot 6948 passed with several great improvements to the E142 substrate mapping standard. The improvements should help users better understand how to use the E142 schema files for more consistent adoption by implementers. 

Spring 2024

The next North America Information and Control spring meetings will be held again at SEMI headquarters in Milpitas, California. The dates will be March 25-27, 2024. Although many attendees were remote during these meetings, I expect many more attendees to be in person at these spring meetings due to the EDA software vender test session.  

To learn more about the SEMI Standards and the work we do as members of SEMI, please click the button below.

Background

At SEMI in North America, the Information & Control Committee meets three times per year; spring summer and fall. This year the summer meetings were held on July 10, 11 and 13 in conjunction with SEMICON West is San Francisco, CA. The meetings include task forces with leaders from Cimetrix on the GEM 300, ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration), GUI, DDA, CDS task forces as well as the committee meeting on the final day which was held on Thursday instead of the typical Wednesday. This is a summary of what happened in the task forces I am highly involved in including GEM 300, ABFI and DDA as well as some updates from SEMI.

Note that all ballots that pass are still subject to a final review by the global SEMI Audit & Review committee, where a ballot can still fail when proper SEMI procedures and regulations were not strictly followed.

SEMI

A few changes are happening at SEMI. SEMI is planning to start publishing ‘red-line’ versions of the SEMI standards. Today, when a new version of a SEMI standard is published, it includes change bars on the side to indicate where changes have occurred. The changed section can then be compared with the previous publication to see what changed. While this is helpful to readers, the planned ‘red-line’ versions will identify precise changes using redline strikethrough and underlining to identify the changes. This is a big benefit to the standards community. I look forward to seeing this new feature.

SEMI is planning to add additional digital enforcement to the SEMI standard documents to help enforce SEMI’s copyright to the standards. This should help curb some of the copyright abuse. Every company implementing or using the SEMI standards should have at least one subscription to SEMIViews, https://www.semiviews.org/.

SEMI has hired another technical writer to help keep SEMI standard publication up to date. Recently, the growing queue of standards awaiting publication has affected SEMI standards development. For example, this has caused delays in the DDA task force developing EDA Freeze 3. In the last 9 months, SEMI has already reduced the publication queue substantially and is committed to catching up early in 2024.

GEM 300 Task Force

A lot is going on the GEM 300 task force.

Ballot 7065, an update to the SEMI E172 passed nearly super-clean. SEMI E172, SPECIFICATION FOR SECS EQUIPMENT DATA DICTIONARY (SEDD) defines the XML schema for documenting a GEM interface. Recently the GEM standard was updated to allow transfer of a SEDD file through the GEM interface using Stream 21 messages. Ballot 7065 adds a few new features and changes to the schema files. The most important changes are names for alarms and a ‘well-known’ element to all collection events, variables, and alarms. This ‘well-known’ element is meant to contain a standardized alias so that end users can automatically map an implementation to required items in the SEMI standards. To capitalize on the new E172 ‘well-known’ feature, new ballots were approved to modify E5/E30, E40, E87, E90, E94, E116 and E157 to include standardized ‘well known’ names. These ballots are expected to be completed in time for cycle 7 voting this year.

Ballot 7066 proposed changes to the SEMI E87 Carrier Management Services (CMS) standard. This included a significant change to the new Carrier Ready to Unload Prediction feature. The primary driver for this change is to accommodate internal buffer equipment where the READY TO UNLOAD state depends on when the host sends a CarrierOut message and can be drastically impacted by the carrier-out queue. The ballot proposes to use CARRIER COMPLETE prediction instead, which can be universally applied both fixed buffer and internal buffer equipment. The change has little impact on fixed buffer equipment, where the time between CARRIER COMPLETE and READY TO UNLOAD is typically short and a fixed time. Unfortunately, this line item in the ballot needs some rework before it is ready for acceptance.

The other line items in ballot 7066 passed including a clarification to the ContentMap behavior and an update to the CMS compliance statement. Two requirements related to the ContentMap were in contradiction to each other affecting the ContentMap value when a carrier object is instantiated. The clarification allows the ContentMap to either be an empty list or a structured list of empty lot and substrate ID information. The change only affects the initial value. The compliance statement change adds the missing “Access Mode State Model” to the compliance statement so implementers can declare whether this feature is implemented and compliant.

Ballot 6991 also passed as super-clean (no negative votes) to update SEMI E4 SEMI Equipment Communications Standard 1 Message Transfer (SECS-I). The update removes biased terminology to be compliant with recently updated SEMI regulations. No technical changes were made.

ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration) Task Force

New proposed standards for Consumables and Durables (ballots 6924A and 6925A) both will require Ratification ballots. This means that a few technical changes need to be made for the new standards to be accepted. Ratification ballots R6924A and R6925A will be submitted in the next voting cycle with those technical changes. If this passes, then the new standards will be published. If it fails, then the ballots will be reworked for another voting cycle.

DDA (Diagnostics Data Acquisition) Task Force

The DDA task force meeting was relatively quiet and uneventful for the first time in years while the task force waits for accepted ballots to be published including updates to E125/E125.2, E134/E134.2, and E120.2. No ballots were adjudicated. Ratification ballot R7002 for SEMI standards E132 and E132.2 passed in the voting cycle 4. Meanwhile new versions of E121 and E179 were published by SEMI in April and June, respectively.

Next steps for the DDA task force include updating E164 and planning a ‘vendor test session’. The E164 update is tied to the GEM 300 ‘well-known’ feature mentioned above, where the E164 names and IDs will be synchronized with the aliases added to the GEM 300 standards. The vendor test session is planned to occur during Spring 2024. Any company wishing to participate to validate EDA client or server software against other implementations is welcome. Participants will run through a small set of E132 scenarios, E125 scenarios and E134 scenarios to validate the current standards. Any issues found during this testing will be quickly resolved so that an EDA freeze 3 version can finally be declared. The task force leaders plan to share a test plan before Fall meetings to help everyone prepare.

Background

Cimetrix CIMConnect^TM customers enjoy many benefits to maintaining an active support contract, and today we are announcing yet another one: access to a set of product-specific training videos.

A few years ago, the Solutions Engineering team at the Cimetrix Connectivity Group posted product training material including the full set of CIMConnect training PowerPoint presentations to facilitate self-training for those unable to attend a formal session. We update this repository periodically as the training material is revised and improved. The material is available online through the Customer Portal. After logging in, you can find the presentations here:

Training Videos

To complement the presentation material shown above, the Solutions Engineering team is now creating video training material. As of mid-June, 2021, the first set of training videos for CIMConnect is also available via the customer portal (see below).

By clicking on the “CIMConnect Video Library”, you can see full set of available training videos and access them via this table:

The material is organized by topic, such as Collection Events or Status Variables. Each topic is subdivided into one or more instruction parts. When there is a lab, the implementation of the lab is covered twice. First, the implementation of the lab is reviewed and demonstrated in CIMConnect’s “Getting Started” sample application. Second, the lab is implemented step by step from scratch in a new application.

A few of the training PowerPoint presentations are not yet complete but should be available soon. This includes topics like Remote Commands, Equipment Constants, Factory Setup, and Operator Interface. Solutions Engineering plans to expand the training to other products as well.

Also, note that other videos are also available that go beyond the scope of the training material. These are found on the same “CIMConnect Video Library” page at the bottom.

Customers are welcome to purchase CIMConnect training and/or consulting services at any time. The training material described above is not a substitute for working directly with a product and standards expert, where a customer can discuss specific equipment hardware, software architecture, and unique customer requirements. Nevertheless, this material should help our customers when they need a refresher course and especially when new employees are assigned to work with CIMConnect after its initial development.

The Cimetrix Connectivity Group of PDF Solutions is happy to announce that Cimetrix CIMControlFramework^TM (CCF) version 6.0 is now available for download.

CCF is a software development kit (SDK) that enables users to design and implement a high-quality equipment control solution using provided components for supervisory control, material handling, operator interface, platform and process control, and automation requirements. CCF is built on the reliable Cimetrix connectivity products which provide GEM/GEM300/EDA interface functionality.

We have previously done a series of blog posts on the functionality of CCF. The same great functionality users have come to expect with CCF is still available, but in a cleaner, slicker, easier to use package.

Reorganized directory structure

In versions before CCF 6.0, core CCF packages (packages provided by CCF) were contained in the same directory as sample code and runtime files. This made it more difficult for CCF users to understand what code was required to be customized and what code was basic to CCF. (Note: you can still customize the basic CCF functionality, but it is not required.) In this release, we modified the directory structure to identify more clearly what is core CCF and what is sample or custom code. This is closer to the structure followed by CCF applications. The following diagram shows the new structure:

In addition to clarifying CCF components, the new structure allows us to easily develop samples for additional equipment types. New samples will be added in future versions of CCF.

New WPF framework

Since CCF started providing a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) framework, we have received feedback on WPF features user would like added to the framework. Also, our engineers have continued to improve their WPF expertise, which has led to other improvements. CCF 6.0 includes the requested changes and best practice improvements in the new WPF framework. Some of these changes include:

• Simplified hierarchy which makes it easier to understand which objects to inherit from.

• Centralized style elements to allow users to change the look and feel (skin) of the operator interface to meet their needs.
• Enhanced controls library that provides common controls for use in creating equipment control.
• Increased E95 compliance, available with a configurable control panel.
• Accelerated screen creation is possible with the change in hierarchy organization and the enhanced control library.
• Richer set of native WPF screens. In earlier versions, CCF had several native WPF screens, but also had many screens created with WinForms and hosted in WPF. CCF 6.0 has all native WPF screens in the WPF sample operator interface. These screens can be reused, customized, or replaced. (Note: WinForms screens are also still available in CCF 6.0.)

The following image shows the main screen of the WPF operator interface for the CCF atmospheric equipment sample application. Most of the controls on the screen are available for use and customization by CCF developers.

Updated samples

CCF has contained fully functional atmospheric and vacuum sample applications for many years. Over the years, we have improved the functionality for scheduling, simulation, and device interface interaction. However, the samples had always remained the same. With CCF 6.0, the atmospheric and vacuum sample applications were updated to take advantage of the other changes that have been made in CCF. These changes to the samples make them more useful in illustrating the proper use of CCF and providing a better starting point for creating custom applications.

Spring cleaning

CCF was originally released the summer of 2011 making it 10 years-old. Over the years, CCF has had several methods, objects and devices become obsolete. They were not removed from the product for backward compatibility reasons, but they were marked as obsolete. Because CCF 6.0 is a major release, we took the opportunity to do some spring cleaning and remove the obsolete items. CCF is now cleaner and tighter, and using it is much clearer.

Training material and upgrade guide

All the PowerPoint slides, lab documents, and corresponding solutions used for training developers on CCF have been updated for CCF 6.0. We have already successfully used the new training materials with a few customers to help them get started with their equipment control application development.

As part of CCF 6.0, we provide a CCF 5.10 to CCF 6.0 Upgrade Guide that contains detailed instructions on how to migrate applications created using previous versions of CCF to CCF 6.0.

Conclusion

We have been looking forward to the CCF 6.0 release for a long time and are excited for developers to get started using it. We are confident existing users will like the changes and that new users will have a good springboard in getting started with their equipment control application needs. We look forward to working with you and hearing from you.

Feature by Ranjan Chatterjee, CIMETRIX
and Daniel Gamota, JABIL

Abstract

The vertical segments of the electronic products manufacturing industry (semiconductor, outsourced system assembly, and test, and PCB assembly) are converging, and service offerings are consolidating due to advanced technology adoption and market dynamics. The convergence will cause shifts in the flow of materials across the supply chain, as well as the introduction of equipment and processes across the segments. The ability to develop smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 enabling technologies (e.g., big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud/edge computing, robotics, automation, IoT) that can be deployed within and between the vertical segments is critical. The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) formed a Smart Manufacturing Technology Working Group (TWG) that included thought leaders from across the electronic products manufacturing industry. The TWG published a roadmap that included the situation analysis, critical gaps, and key needs to realize smart manufacturing.Article First Posted by SMT007 Magazine

Introduction

The future of manufacturing in the electronics industry is dependent on the ability to develop and deploy suites of technology platforms to realize smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0. Smart manufacturing technologies will improve efficiency, safety, and productivity by incorporating more data collection and analysis systems to create a virtual business model covering all aspects from supply chain to manufacturing to customer experience. The increased use of big data analytics and AI enables the collection of large volumes of data and the subsequent analysis more efficient. By integrating a portfolio of technologies, it has become possible to transition the complete product life cycle from supplier to customer into a virtual business model or cyber-physical model. Several industry reports project manufacturers will realize tens of billions of dollars in gains by 2022 after deploying smart manufacturing solutions. In an effort to facilitate the development and commercialization of the critical smart manufacturing building blocks (e.g., automation, machine learning, or ML, data communications, digital thread), several countries established innovation institutes and large R&D programs. These collaborative activities seek to develop technologies that will improve traceability and visualization, to enable realtime analytics for predictive process and machine control, and to build flexible, modular manufacturing equipment platforms for highmix, low-volume product assembly.

The vertical segments of the electronic products manufacturing industry (semiconductor (SEMI), outsourced system assembly, and test (OSAT), and printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) are converging, and service offerings are being consolidated. This occurrence is due to the acceleration of technology development and the market dynamics, providing industry members in specific vertical segments an opportunity to capture a greater percentage of the electronics industry’s total profit pool.

The convergence of the SEMI, OSAT, and PCBA segments will cause shifts in the flow of materials across the supply chain, as well as the introduction of equipment and processes across the segments (e.g., back-end OSAT services offered by PCBA segment). OSAT services providers are using equipment and platforms typically found in semiconductor back-end manufacturing, and PCBA services providers are installing equipment and developing processes similar to those used by OSAT.

The ability to develop smart manufacturing technologies (e.g., big data analytics, AI, cloud/ edge computing, robotics, automation, IoT) that can be deployed within the vertical segments as well as between the vertical segments is critical. In addition, the ability to enable the technologies to evolve unhindered is imperative to establish a robust integrated digital thread.

As the electronic products manufacturing supply chain continues to evolve and experience consolidation, shifts in the traditional flow of materials (e.g., sand to systems) will drive the need to adopt technologies that seamlessly interconnect all facets of manufacturing operations. The iNEMI Smart Manufacturing TWG published a roadmap that would provide insight into the situation analysis and key needs for the vertical segments and horizontal topics (Figure 1) ^[1].

In this roadmap, the enabling smart manufacturing technologies are referred to as horizontal topics that span across the electronics industry manufacturing segments: security, data flow architecture, and digital building blocks (AI, ML, and digital twin).

The three electronics manufacturing industry segments SEMI, OSAT, and PCBA share some common challenges:•

• Responding to rapidly changing, complex business requirements
• Managing increasing factory complexity
• Achieving financial growth targets while margins are declining
• Meeting factory and equipment reliability, capability, productivity, and cost requirements
• Leveraging factory integration technologies across industry segment boundaries
• Meeting the flexibility, extendibility, and scalability needs of a leading-edge factory
• Increasing global restrictions on environmental issues

These challenges are increasing the demand to deploy, enabling smart manufacturing solutions that can be leveraged across the verticals.

Enabling Smart Manufacturing Technologies (Horizontal Topics): Situation Analysis

Many of the challenges may be addressed by several enabling smart manufacturing technologies (horizontal topics) that span across the electronics industry manufacturing segments: security, data flow, and digital building blocks. The key needs for these are discussed as related to the different vertical segments (SEMI, OSAT, and PCBA) and the intersection between the vertical segments.

Members of the smart manufacturing TWG presented the attribute needs for the following: security, data flow, digital building blocks, and digital twin. Common across the vertical segments is the ability to develop and deploy the appropriate solutions that allow the ability to manufacture products at low cost and high volume. Smart manufacturing is considered a journey that will require hyper-focus to ensure the appropriate technology foundation is established. The enabling horizontal topics are the ones that are considered the most important to build a strong, agile, and scalable foundation.

Security Security is discussed in terms of two classes: physical and digital. The tools and protocols deployed for security is an increasingly important topic that spans across many industries and is not specific only to the electronics manufacturing industry. Security is meant to protect a number of important assets and system attributes that may vary according to the process (novel and strong competitive advantage) and perceived intrinsic value of the intellectual property (IP).

In some instances, it directly addresses the safety of workers, equipment, and the manufacturing process. In other cases, it transitions toward the protection of electronic asset forms, such as design documents, bill of materials, process, business data, and others. A few key considerations for security are access control [2], data control [3], input validation, process confidentiality, and system integrity [2].

At the moment in manufacturing, in general, IT security issues are often only raised reactively once the development process is over and specific security-related problems have already occurred. However, such belated implementation of security solutions is both costly and also often fails to deliver a reliable solution to the relevant problem. Consequently, it is deemed necessary to take a comprehensive approach as a process, including implementation of security threat identification and risk analysis and mitigation cycles on security challenges.

Data Flow

General factory operations and manufacturing technologies (i.e., process, test, and inspection) and the supporting hardware and software are evolving quickly; the ability to transmit and store increasing volume of data for analytics (AI, ML, predictive) is accelerating. Also, the advent and subsequent growth of big data are occurring faster than originally anticipated. This trend will continue highlighting existing challenges and introducing new gaps that were not considered previously (Figure 2).

As an example, data retention practices must quickly evolve; it has been determined that limitations on data transmission volume and length of data storage archives will disappear (e.g., historical data retention of “all” will become standard practice). Examples of data flow key considerations are data pipes, machine-tomachine (M2M) communication, and synchronous/ asynchronous data transmission.

A flexible, secure, and redundant architecture for data flow and the option considerations (e.g., cloud, fog, versus edge) must be articulated. The benefits and risks must be identified and discussed. Data flow and its ability to accelerate the evolution of big data technologies will enable the deployment of solutions to realize benefits from increases in data generation, storage, and usage. These capabilities delivering higher data volumes at real-time and nearreal- time rates will increase the availability of equipment parameter data to positively impact yield and quality. There are several challenges and potential solutions associated with the increases in data generation, storage, and usage; capabilities for higher data rates; and additional equipment parameter data availability.

The primary topics to address are data quality and incorporating subject-matter expertise in analytics to realizing effective on-line manufacturing solutions. The emergence of big data in electronics manufacturing operations should be discussed in terms of the “5 Vs Framework”:

1. Volume
2. Velocity
3. Variety (or data merging)
4. Veracity (or data quality)
5. Value (or application of analytics)

The “5 Vs” are foundational to appreciate the widespread adoption of big data analytics in the electronics industry. It is critical to address the identified gaps—such as accuracy, completeness, context richness, availability, and archival length—to improve data quality to support the electronics manufacturing industry advanced analytics ^[4].

Digital Building Blocks

The advancements in the development of digital building blocks (interconnected digital technologies) are providing digitization, integration, and automation opportunities to realize smart manufacturing benefits. These technologies will enable electronics manufacturing companies to stay relevant as the era of the digitally- connected smart infrastructure is developed and deployed. Several technologies considered fundamental digital building blocks are receiving increased attention in the electronics manufacturing industry (e.g., AI, ML, augmented reality, virtual reality, and digital twin).

AI and ML

AI and ML tools and algorithms can provide improvements in production yields and quality. These tools and algorithms will enable the transformation of traditional processes and manufacturing platforms (processes, equipment, and tools). The situation analysis for AI and ML, as well as their enablers, typically consider the following features and operational specifications: communications at fixed frequency, commonality analysis, material and shipment history and traceability, models for predicting yield and performance, predefined image processing algorithms, secure gateway, warehouse management systems.

AI and ML present several opportunities to aggregate data for the purpose of generating actionable insights into standard processes. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Preventive maintenance: Collecting historical data on machine performance to develop a baseline set of characteristics on optimal machine performance, and to identify anomalies as they occur.
2. Production forecasting: Leveraging trends over time on production output versus customer demand, to more accurately plan production cycles.
3. Quality control: Inspection applications can leverage many variants of ML to fine-tune ideal inspection criteria. Leveraging deep learning, convolutional neural networks, and other methods can generate reliable inspection results, with little to no human intervention.
4. Communication: It is important for members of the electronics manufacturing industry to adopt open communication protocols and standards ^[5–8].

Digital Twin Technology

The concept of real-time simulation is often referred to as the digital twin. Its full implementation is expected to become a requirement to remain cost-competitive in legacy and new facility types. Digital twin will initially be used to enable prediction capabilities for tools and process platforms that historically cause the largest and most impactful bottlenecks. The ultimate value of the digital twin will depend on its ability to continue to evolve by ingesting data and the availability of data with the “5 Vs”: veracity, variety, volume, velocity, and value. The situation analysis of the digital twin within and between electronics industry manufacturing segments highlight the following data considerations: historical, periodic, and reactive.

The concept of a digital twin lends itself to on-demand access, monitoring and end-toend visualization of production, and the product lifecycle. By simulating production floors, a factory will be able to assess attainable projected KPIs (and what changes are required to attain them), forecast production outputs, and throughputs through a mix of cyber-physical realities (the physical world to the virtual world, and back to the physical world), and expedite the deployment of personnel and equipment to manufacturing floors worldwide.

Enabling Smart Manufacturing Technologies (Horizontal Topics): Key Attribute Needs

Security

Security will continue to be a primary concern as the electronics manufacturing industry adopts technologies and tools that rely on ingested data to improve manufacturing quality and yield and offer differentiated products at a lower cost and higher performance. SEMI members generated a survey to appreciate the needs, challenges, and potential solutions for security in the industry and its supply chain and gather more comprehensive input from the industry in terms of users, equipment and system suppliers, security experts, and security solution providers ^[9]. It is a topic that permeates many facets of manufacturing: equipment, tools, designs, process guidelines, materials, etc. Processes continue to demand a significant level of security to minimize valuable know-how IP loss; this requirement will generate the greatest amount of discussion such as data partitioning, production recipes, equipment, and tool layout. A few key attribute needs for security are network segmentation ^[10], physical access, and vulnerability mitigation.

These security issues are not unique to microelectronics manufacturing, and many of the issues go beyond manufacturing in general. The topic of security should reference the challenges and potential solutions across the manufacturing space. As an example, the IEC established an Advisory Committee on Information Security and Data Privacy ^{[11figuredfdafdfd}. It is suggested to collaborate with other standards and industry organizations that are developing general manufacturing security roadmaps by delineating specific microelectronics manufacturing issues and focusing on common needs.

Data Flow

The development of a scalable architecture that provides flexibility to expand; connect across the edge, the fog, and the cloud; and integrate a variety of devices and systems generating data flow streams is critical. A smart factory architecture may, for example, accommodate the different verticals in the electronics manufacturing industry as well as companies in non-electronics manufacturing industries.

As mentioned previously, different industries seeking to deploy smart manufacturing technologies should leverage architectures thatprovide the desired attributes; data flow architecture is considered a prime candidate for leveraging and cross-industry collaboration to identify optimum solutions (i.e., data synchronizers, execution clients).

The development and deployment of technologies for data flow are accelerating. Focus on data analytics, and data retention protocols are increasing at a faster rate than first anticipated. It is imperative to collect the critical data as well as to establish guidelines to perform intelligent analysis and to exercise the appropriate algorithms to specify data-driven decisions. Several topics related to data are under consideration, such as general protocols:

• “All” versus “anomaly” data retention practices
• Optimization of data storage volumes
• Data format guidelines for analytics to drive reactive and predictive technologies
• Data quality protocols enabling improvements in time synchronization, compression/uncompression, and blending/merging
• Guidelines to optimize data collecting, transferring, storing, and analyzing

Data considerations for equipment are:

• Defining context data sets for equipment visibility
• Improving data accessibility to support functions
• Data-enabled transition from reactive to redictive functionality
• Data visibility of equipment information (state, health, etc.)

Digital Building Blocks

The ability to deploy the necessary digital building blocks to realize smart manufacturing is at different stages of maturity.

AI and ML

A few key attribute needs for AI and ML are data communication standards, data formatting standards, and 3PL tracking solutions. Technologies, such as AI and ML, are seen as enablers to transition to a predictive mode of operation: predictive maintenance, equipment health monitoring, fault prediction, predictive scheduling, and yield prediction and feedback. This paradigm in AI-enhanced control systems architectures will enable the systems to “learn” from their environment by ingesting and analyzing large data sets. Advanced learning techniques will be developed that improve adaptive model- based control systems and predictive control systems. The continued development and assessment of AI and ML technologies is critical to establish the most robust and well-tuned prediction engines that are required to support emerging production equipment.

Digital Twin Technology

Advances in digital twin technologies are accelerating as the potential benefits are communicated to end-users. Also, the costs for enabling technologies (hardware and software platforms) are becoming less expensive. The following are considered key attribute needs that will increase adoption and broad-based deployment of the digital twin (product design, product manufacturing, and product performance: digital thread, predictive, prescriptive, and systemwide continuous data access.

Digital twin is a long-term vision that will depend on the implementation of discrete prediction capabilities (devices, tools, and algorithms) that are subsequently integrated on a common prediction platform. It is generally considered that the digital twin will provide a real-time simulation of facility operations as an extension of the facility operations system.

The successful deployment of digital twin in a facility environment will require high-quality data (e.g., accuracy, velocity, dynamic updating) to ensure the digital twin is an accurate representation of the real-time state of the fab. Also, the realization of this vision will depend on the ability to design an architecture that provides the key technologies to operate collaboratively by sharing data and capabilities. Ultimately, the success of the digital twin will depend on the ability to develop a path for implementation that provides redundancy and several risk assessment gates.

Prioritized Research, Development, and Implementation Needs

The topic of collaboration is often mentioned in industry-led initiatives as a key element to realize the benefits attributed to smart manufacturing. There is a strong drive by members of the electronics manufacturing industry to engage in activities that foster collaboration. Participants in these activities recognize that solutions must be consensus-based and adopted by many vendors. Equipment suppliers appreciate that deep domain knowledge combined with data analysis contributes to only a fraction of the potential value that can be captured. The optimal value will be realized when data is shared across manufacturing lines in facilities, with vertical segment industry supply chain members and across vertical segments.

Example prioritized research, development, and implementation needs topics are as follows:

• Define data flow standard interfaces and data formats for all equipment and tools
• Investigate if data flow continuity between vertical segments should be mandatory or optional
• Determine optimal operation window for the latency of data versus process flow and quantify permissible latency for data flow when used to determine process go/no-go
• Investigate data security and encryption requirements when sharing common process tools versus isolating process equipment between vertical segments
• Develop open and common cross-vertical-segments communication standards and protocols for equipment

Gaps and Showstoppers

There is universal agreement that digitization will drive huge growth in data volumes. Many predict that cloud and hybrid cloud solutions are critical to enable the storage and subsequent manipulation of data by AI algorithms to derive value. However, industry members must adopt consensus-based standards and guidelines for connectivity protocols and data structures (Figure 4). Smart manufacturing is a journey, and a robust and scalable connectivity architecture must be established on which to deploy digital building blocks (e.g., AI, ML to extract the optimal value from the data). 

Example critical gaps that could significantly impact the progress of the deployment and adoption of smart manufacturing are:

• Undefined data security between vertical segments
• Lack of machine interface standardization for data flow
• Undefined data formats for data flow
• Data vulnerability when security is breached
• Robust and scalable connectivity architecture across electronics vertical segments to enabling smart manufacturing functionality (event and alarm notification, data variable collection, recipe management, remote control, adjustment of settings, interfacing with operators, etc.)

Summary

The iNEMI Smart Manufacturing Roadmap Chapter provides the situation analysis and key attribute needs for the horizontal topics within the vertical segments as well as between the vertical segments. Also, the chapter identifies the primary gaps and needs for the horizontal topics that must be addressed to enable the realization of smart manufacturing:

• Definitions: Smart manufacturing, smart factory, Industry 4.0, AI, ML, etc.
• Audits for smart manufacturing readiness: Develop consensus-based documentation, leverage published documents (e.g., Singapore Readiness Index ^[12])
• Security: Best practices, physical, digital, local and remote access, etc.
• Equipment diversity and data flow communications: Old, new, and mixture
• Data attribute categorization and prioritization: Volume, velocity, variety, veracity, and value
• Cost versus risk profile versus ROI
• Talent pool (subject-matter experts): Data and computer scientists, manufacturing engineers, and automation
• Standards and guidelines: Data formats and structures, communication protocols, and data retention
• Open collaboration: SEMATECH 2.0

The gaps and needs that were identified for addressing require additional detail for the status of the different vertical segments to appropriately structure the initiatives. It was suggested to circulate surveys to gather the information to appreciate the issue. One survey format was suggested as an example template: Manufacturing Data Security Survey for IRDS FI Roadmap ^[13].

iNEMI, together with other organizations, such as SEMI, can organize workshops to facilitate collaboration between the electronics manufacturing industry stakeholders. In addition, iNEMI can establish cross-industry collaborative projects that can develop the enabling technologies to address the roadmap identified needs and gaps to realize smart manufacturing.

Further, organizations, such as iNEMI and SEMI, can collaborate to establish guidelines and standards (e.g., data flow interfaces and data formats) as well as lead groups to develop standards for equipment and tool hardware to reduce complexity during manufacturing. Also, iNEMI can engage other industry groups to foster the exchange of best practices and key knowledge from smart manufacturing initiatives.

The members of the roadmap TWG are committed to provide guidance during the smart manufacturing journey—people, processes, and technologies. Members of the TWG also suggested engaging microelectronics groups as well as non-microelectronics groups to assess opportunities to leverage existing smart manufacturing guidelines and standards.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the members of the iNEMI Smart Manufacturing TWG. Their dedication, thought leadership, and deep appreciation for SMT enabling technologies was critical to preparing the roadmap chapter.

In addition, we would like to thank the participants and facilitators of the SEMI Smart Manufacturing Workshop—Practical Implementations and Applications of Smart Manufacturing (Milpitas, California, on November 27, 2018). SMT007

References

1. 2019 iNEMI Roadmap.
2. U.S. National Institute Standard and Technology’s Special Publication 800-82.
3. U.S. National Institute Standard and Technology’s Special Publication 800-171.
4. IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems, Factory Integration.
5. Japan Robot Association’s Standard No. 1014.
6. SEMI E30-0418, Generic Model for Communications and Control of Manufacturing Equipment (GEM); SEMI A1-0918 Horizontal Communication Between Equipment; SEMI E5-1217, Communications Standard 2 Message Content (SECS-II); SEMI E4-0418, Equipment Communications Standard 1 Message Transfer (SECS-I).
7. Hermes Standard.
8. IPC-CFX Standard.
9. J. Moyne, S. Mashiro, and D. Gross, “Determining a Security Roadmap for the Microelectronics Industry,” 29th Annual SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC), pp. 291–294, 2018.
10. IEC 62443 3-2.
11. website: iec.ch/acsec.
12. EDB Singapore, “The Singapore Smart Industry Readiness Index,” October 22, 2019.
13. www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZXLS6LH.

Ranjan Chatterjee is vice president and general manager, smart factory business, at Cimetrix.

Dan Gamota is vice president, manufacturing technology and innovation, at Jabil.

Article First Posted by SMT007 Magazine

Feature by Ranjan Chatterjee, CIMETRIX
and Daniel Gamota, JABIL

Editor’s note: Originally titled, “The Convergence of Technologies and Standards Across the Electronic Products Manufacturing Industry (SEMI, OSAT, and PCBA) to Realize Smart Manufacturing ” this article was published as a paper in the Proceedings of the SMTA Pan Pacific Microelectronics Symposium and is pending publication in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

 

 

 

Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in the development, testing, and integration of the Cimetrix ELS library that encompasses the SEMI A1, A1.1, and A2 (SMT-ELS) standards. It’s been exciting to see how ELS has increasingly been embraced as a connectivity solution for electronic manufacturing equipment.

I was first introduced to the SMT-ELS standard in June 2019 by Alan Weber (VP, New Product Innovations, Cimetrix). To begin, I obtained a functioning ELS implementation from Siemens Japan as well as the needed hardware. To make sure I fully understood ELS, I attended a 2-day class presented by Siemens and began studying the ELS standard and the Siemens ELS implementation.

It took a significant amount of time to get familiar with Siemens Implementation and gain an understanding of what they did to support the ELS standard. Siemens Japan has done a great job with their SEMI SMT-ELS implementation, and their assistance with my efforts is greatly appreciated. Once I felt familiar enough with ELS, I built a SMEMA interface driver to simulate the conveyor signals.

Using the SMT-ELS communications library, the Cimetrix development team designed a sample equipment application which I was able to use for initial connectivity testing. At first, it was fairly difficult to get the two libraries to communicate. However, when I used the Cimetrix EquipmentTest^TM software, I was able to find defects in our library, which were quickly and easily resolved by our development team. 

While it was beneficial to have a known ELS implementation to test against, it is now clear how valuable using a testing tool would be for anyone creating or validating their own SEMI SMT-ELS implementation.

Even though the SEMI A1, A1.1 and A2 standards are not long, they are dense. As adoption of these standards increases, it becomes paramount that equipment manufactures can test their SMT-ELS implementations during development. It is not effective or efficient for equipment manufacturers to test against other equipment as their primary form of testing. This is why the Cimetrix EquipmentTest SMT-ELS plug-in is so valuable.

I am currently working on test are written in C# and the code is easy to follow. The tests are split into two categories; one for horizontal communication between equipment ,and vertical communication to a factory system.

Horizontal Tests

For Panel Transfer verification, EquipmentTest connects to the first and last equipment in the line. This allows EquipmentTest to send messages to the first equipment and validate the format and content of the message from the last equipment. 

For this test, the user defines the panel parameters. The panel is sent to the first equipment. Once the last equipment in the line sends the panel to EquipmentTest, the Material Data Content is verified. 

In addition to actual tests, EquipmentTest can be used to send user defined atomic messages such as SetMDMode.

Vertical Tests

EquipmentTest Connects directly to the vertical port of the equipment. Using EquipmentTest, I can set and validate the Net Configuration.

The EquipmentTest software has been pivotal in developing and test our SMT-ELS Implementation. A demonstration of EquipmentTest SMT-ELS and the Cimetrix EquipmentConnect^TM SMT-ELS software will be given at Productronica from November 12-15, 2019 in Munich, Germany. Please drop by our booth any time, or feel free to set up an appointment in advance. We look forward to meeting with you and discussing your ELS needs!