Industry News, Trends and Technology, and Standards Updates

The Cimetrix open source GEMBridge solution is now updated to use with Kepware Technologies KEPServerEX OPC platform. Cimetrix customers using CIMConnect and CIM300 can use GEMBridge to connect their PLC-controlled equipment to SECS/GEM and GEM 300 interfaces using an OPC-compliant interface.

Cimetrix announced this solution last week in a press release. With this solution, OEMs can send messages to and from programmable logic controllers to enable complete equipment control throughout the system. 

Kepware’s KEPServerEX is a flexible and scalable solution for connecting, managing, monitoring, and controlling diverse automation devices and software applications. Communications is managed through a robust platform that supports an array of open standards such as OPC, propriety communication protocols, API's, and various automation systems' interfaces. KEPServerEX enables improved operations and decision making throughout all levels of an organization.

KEPServerEX provides the ability to consolidate data and information from various sources. This not only ensures consistency and reliability, but also reduces the number of Third-Party communication servers from which the end application must gather data. Furthermore, having a single source gather data for client applications reduces network traffic, device and system resource usage, and data inconsistencies. Instead, it provides a manageable and scalable platform for automation communications.

For more information, contact Cimetrix at info@cimetrix.com.

The semiconductor industry may have seen a pause during the current growth cycle. For the first time in almost a year, the North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of less than parity. According to SEMI, there were $1.17 billion in orders worldwide in September 2014 (on a three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.94. A book-to-bill of 0.94 means that $94 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

The bookings figure of $1.17 billion is 12.9% below the final August 2014 level of $1.35 billion, and is 18.1% higher than the September 2013 order level of $992.8 million.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in September 2014 was $1.25 billion, which is 3.3% lower than in August, but is 22.5 % higher than the September 2013 billings level of $1.02 billion.

According to Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI "While order activity moderated, equipment spending this year is expected to be robust and remain on pace for double-digit year-over-year growth.”

To read the complete report, visit http://semi.org/en/node/51796.

At Cimetrix, we are always keeping an eye on industry forecasts to see how industry analysts are analyzing market trends.

According to market research analysts at Gartner, the semiconductor capital equipment spending is expected to rise 17.1% in 2014.

There is good news for the wafer fabrication equipment sector. Even with a slight dip in 2016, Gartner is forecasting long term growth through 2018.

On the other hand, Gartner is forecasting a significant drop off in both die packaging and assembly equipment  and in automatic test equipment (ATE) spending in 2016. Gartner is forecasting wafer level packaging and assembly equipment spending will remain steady through 2018.

To see the complete release, visit http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2876317.

James Amano of SEMI, in the October 2014 SEMI Standards Watch, announced a new Automation Technology Committee whose mission is to bring together automation standards for the semiconductor, PV, HB-LED, and other related industries. The first chapters will be in Europe and Japan.

The new committee replaces the PV Automation Committee. That committee developed standards based upon the SECS/GEM standards were used by the photovoltaic equipment industry. Interestingly enough, programmable logic controller (PLC) manufacturers are now considering using those standards because they are general enough to support flow-oriented manufacturing in other industries.

Previously, different industry segments such as PV, FPD, and HB-LED addressed their automation requirements in separate committees. Now, the new committee will combine interests and resources into a single group.

With the growing interest in the use of SEMI EDA/Interface A standards, we have been getting a great deal of requests for the difference between Interface A and SECS/GEM. 

For a quick comparison, here is a table to showing some of the differences between Interface A and SECS/GEM:

Additional Resources:

• SEC/GEM SEMI Standards
• Download the Cimetrix SECS/GEM Whitepaper
• EDA/Interface A SEMI Standards
• Dowload the Cimetrix EDA/Interface A SEMI Standards Whitepaper

When I posted a blog back in April, I wrote about the change in the industry outlook over the previous six months. In October 2012, the semiconductor equipment industry looked as if it was going to go into a decline, perhaps a steep decline, but by January 2013, the outlook looked brighter. By March 2013, industry analysts were predicting 2013 would be down, but not as badly as analysts originally thought. Still, TSMC was reporting they are adding capacity and Applied Materials announced they were on an up cycle. In addition, the forecast for 2014 was looking bright, with predictions of healthy growth.

I had the privilege of speaking at the annual Advanced Process Control and Manufacturing (APCM) Europe conference in April of this year. The conference supports manufacturers, suppliers and scientific community of semiconductor, photovoltaic, LED, flat panel, MEMS, and other related industries. The topics are focused on current challenges and future needs of Advanced Process Control and Manufacturing Effectiveness. The theme of this year’s conference was From Reactive to Predictive - from SPC to Model-Based Process Control.

My presentation was entitled Fingerprinting and FDC: First Cousins in the Equipment Productivity Family. One of the areas I covered in that presentation was how the whole concept of fingerprinting came about.

I’ve written about Equipment Health Monitoring, also known as fingerprinting, previously – see my blog post about Fingerprinting at SEMICON West at SEMICON West Follow Up: ISMI Fingerprinting Project. While the term fingerprinting has only recently been applied to this technology, the use of this type of application goes back a decade to the advent of Equipment Engineering Systems (EES), when the first major implementation of that technology was in the Renesas factory in Naka, Japan.

The basic idea was that semiconductor manufacturers could learn a great deal by collecting detailed trace and event information from the equipment to understand the behavior of low-level mechanisms, with the assumption that if the low-level mechanisms were exhibiting proper behaviors, then the entire machine would be operating within its specifications. This is the fundamental idea behind fingerprinting.

Back in 2003, when Renesas was implementing their EES program, there were no good standards for collecting low-level, high-speed trace information, and so the Renesas engineers expended a great deal of effort generating custom interfaces to collect trace and event data they could then feed into a common database. However, as they pursued the effort, they showed what kinds of analysis of the collected data could give them insight into the performance of their fab’s equipment.

As this idea gained traction, Shigeru Kobayashi one of the industry thought leaders at Renesas, proposed through the ITRS and SEMATECH to create a program around the idea of using detailed trace information to improve the equipment quality over time. This suggestion triggered the inception of the EEQA (Enhanced Equipment Quality Assurance) program.

The basic idea of the EEQA program, as it was with EES, was to collect low-level trace information about equipment mechanisms. That data could be shared with the equipment suppliers to show them how the equipment was operating in a production situation in order to improve the design and performance of the machines over time.

The EEQA program lasted more than 3 years at ISMI. There were a number of studies regarding the specific information that equipment engineers and fab engineers could use to characterize different equipment mechanisms and components. There were even a couple of prototypes developed to show how that information could be collected, modeled, and visualized and reported. However, the structural problem with the program was that it placed expectations on the OEMs regarding the amount of data that would need to be collected (and the effort involved in enabling this) without clearly showing the benefit to these suppliers. Consequently, the EEQA program lost support and lay fallow for a while.

However, the basic ideas of EEQA were preserved and folded into a subsequent SEMATECH umbrella program called equipment health monitoring (EHM). However, the energy for the program happened when someone attached an intuitive label to this notion of characterizing a component with its raw data. People attached the term “fingerprint” to that basic model, and the idea of grouping these trace values into a fingerprinting model that would have a specific value that manufacturing can track over time made the basic idea easier to understand and support. When EEQA was re-characterized and re-labeled as fingerprinting, the concept, and understanding the benefit that accrues from collecting and analyzing low-level trace data, finally took hold.

There was one other vital step necessary for the program to catch on in people’s minds. Equipment suppliers and fabs realized that to do predictive maintenance, as well as other health monitoring activities, they needed the data that they could collect using fingerprinting. With the basic concept of a fingerprint understood, and the recognition of the real value that collecting and analyzing the data would provide, both the equipment suppliers and the semiconductor manufacturers began to recognize the need for Equipment Health Monitoring, or fingerprinting.

The key component of any successful fingerprinting program is in-depth equipment domain knowledge, whether that comes from the OEM or from extensive use of that equipment at a specific fab. The OEM is the best official source, but the program can be initiated by the end user as well.

I will discuss more about the presentation at APCM Europe in my next blog post. Stay tuned.

By Dave Faulkner

Executive VP, Sales and Marketing, Cimetrix

Back in October of 2012, the outlook for the semiconductor equipment industry was dominated by dark clouds. First, the U.S. and European economies were in the doldrums, and there was a great deal of discussion about an economic slowdown in the China. But the economy was not the only factor that weighed upon the industry. There was also a significant amount of uncertainty about what was happening with the personal computer market. Demand for PCs was dropping, which impacted not just microprocessors, but DRAMs as well.

With all the news about the global economic health and the trends in PCs, analysts were calling for a significant fall-off in semiconductor equipment orders. Gartner, in October of last year, forecasted 2012 would end with a 13% drop in equipment revenue from 2011 levels, and that 2013 would be flat to slightly down. (See Semi Equip Spending To Drop 13.3% In 2012, Gartner Says).

However, the story became even worse. In December, Gartner’s forecast changed to a drop of 17% in revenue in 2012 and a further decrease of 10% in 2013 (Gartner: Fab equipment still getting softer, next up cycle starts in 2014). SEMI’s forecasts for 2012 and 2013 reflected a similar decline of 12% and 2%, respectively (See Semiconductor New Equipment Market $38.2 Billion for 2012; Recovery in 2014.

Analysts were so focused on the bad news that they did not consider the good news coming out. For example, the drop in PCs was accompanied by an increase in demand for tablet computers and smartphones, both of which used processors, flash memory, and mobile communications chips. Just a couple of months after the dismal forecasts, the three largest semiconductor manufacturers announced their intent to continue or increase equipment expenditures.

When industry analysts started to see some of the brighter signs, the picture improved. In January, SEMI called for a flat to down year, with an uptick in the second half of 2013 (In 2013, Fab Equipment Spending for Front-End Fabs to Shrink Back to 0% Growth). Here is what they predicted, effectively forecasting 0% growth in 2013:

While 0% growth does not sound very good by itself, it certainly sounds better than down 10% or more!

In January 2013, market analysts were calling for a strong increase in semiconductor device sales, led primarily by communications chips (See EETimes: Semi Upswing Seen in 2013). TSMC described plans to increase their capital expenditures by 8% to a record $9 billion for 28nm production and initial 20nm technology. Intel announced they would invest $13 billion in 2013, including $2 billion on construction of a 450mm facility. Samsung even stated they would invest $11-$12 billion in 2013, approximately what they spent in 2012.

In addition, Applied Materials’ latest quarterly report showed a strong forecast, up 15-25% (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/applied-materials-announces-first-quarter-210302893.html). In SEMI’s February and March 2013 semiconductor book-to-bill reports, we had some very good news, showing the market for equipment growing with a robust book-to-bill of 1.10 for each month.

Over the last four months, we have seen a significant shift in the semiconductor industry forecast, from a flat-to-down year to an overall positive year for semiconductor equipment revenue. When we look at history of the semiconductor equipment industry over the last 15 years, we see how the industry cycles up and down. It is our belief we are currently experiencing the industry trough, when capital equipment sales are at their lowest in the cycle and they are about to trend upwards. At this point, it is difficult to forecast accurately what that increase will be, but we think the trends are positive.

Stay tuned and we will continue to update the story.