Industry News, Trends and Technology, and Standards Updates

by Rob Schreck
Marketing Manager

If you are interested in learning more about the SEMI EDA/Interface A factory connectivity standard, you can look at our EDA/Interface A web page, or download our white paper. But - if you are going to attend the SEMICON West event in San Francisco, July 10-12, 2012, at the Moscone Center - you can also visit us at Booth #1241 and hear about how we can support your requirements.

So many people have questions regarding EDA/Interface A standards and how to implement them. Freeze Version I, Freeze Version II, common metadata, MCA, 5002B – it seems like a confusing array of issues, numbers and acronyms. Cimetrix can guide you through the process faster and with less risk than any alternative.

For example, if you are developing a new system that needs to implement an EDA connection, come by our booth to see a demonstration of our CIMPortal software. We will show you how it can guide you as you set up the equipment model, the basic element in an EDA solution. For example, below is an example of how a designer can browse the E120/E125 structure of the equipment model using the E125 web services APIs.

Equipment Metadata Browsing

We can also discuss what it takes to get your equipment ready to be accepted at the fab, and how you can work with the fab to pass their acceptance tests.

If you work at a semiconductor fab, come by and talk with us about how you can use this SEMI standard to stay competitive and increase productivity while decreasing costs. Let’s talk about common metadata and how that can make it easier for you to access the data available through EDA. We can also discuss the challenges of dealing with different equipment models and garnering consistent data to analyze equipment processes. We can tell you our experience of working with semiconductor fabs to implement EDA and establishing acceptance criteria for the interface. If you would like, we can demonstrate our EDAConnect software that enables you to set up your EDA connection to the equipment.

We can discuss our product support and training classes that will help get your team up and running on the standard and the implementation process.

by Rob Schreck
Marketing Manager

As we gear up for SEMICON West, we are encouraged by some good news in the industry after enduring the bleak news of autumn and winter. SEMI reports the North American semiconductor capital equipment industry book-to-bill was over 1.0 in February and March of this year (see Semiconductor Equipment Industry Book-to-Bill), and the PV equipment book-to-bill ratio is starting back up (see PV Manufacturing Equipment Book-to-Bill Increases from Record Low). With the good news comes more companies developing new equipment, drawing more attention to SEMI standards such as SECS/GEM and PV2 (PVECI).

Understanding the SEMI SECS/GEM and PV2 standards, and the impact to their product roadmaps, might seem a little daunting for many equipment suppliers. We have updated a white paper to provide some background, called Introduction to the SEMI Standards: Implementing GEM and PV2.

This paper highlights key elements and issues associated with GEM software projects to help guide users toward a successful implementation.

A GEM (E30) interface is implemented by the equipment manufacturer to enable the equipment and factory software (a.k.a. “host”) to communicate using SECS-II (E5) messages via Ethernet.

GEM standard compliance consists of fundamental requirements and additional capabilities, and compliance is only required for the equipment interface, not for the factory host software. Companies scale the GEM standard implementations to match the complexity of the equipment and the needs of the factory host software.

The GEM fundamental requirements include establishing communication with the factory host software, implementing a processing state machine, event notification, protocol error messages, and a GEM implementation document. Here is an example of such a document, and you can find a GEM compliance check list at Are You GEM Compliant?

GEM Compliance Statement

Much like how the GEM standard is a subset of the SECS-II standard with additional required features, the PV2 standard is a subset of the GEM standard with additional required features, which include:

• The required format to use for data items in the SECS-II messages
• A specific list of variables, equipment constants, and collection events
• A subset of SECS-II messages
• An implementation of SEMI E10 to report equipment states related to reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM)
• An implementation of the Network Time Protocol (NTP)
• A statement of PV2 compliance

These PV2 requirements should make PV2-compliant equipment even easier than GEM to integrate with the factory host software.

by David Francis
Product Manager

During SEMICON West last year, ISMI made a presentation about a proposed new standard: EDA Common Metadata. EDA stands for Equipment Data Acquisition and is also known as Interface A. The EDA Common Metadata was being balloted as SEMI Document number 5002. That initial ballot failed and so did the next attempt. However, recently, on the third attempt, document 5002B passed SEMI’s Information & Control Committee voting. While it still needs to pass the SEMI ISC Audits & Review Committee before it becomes an official SEMI standard, the 5002B ballot seems to be gaining support.

The SEMI E30, E40, E87, E90, E94, E116, E148, and E157 all define communication and behavior standards for semiconductor processing and metrology equipment. These standards produce the content of the EDA data. The E120, E125, E128, E132, E134, and E138 standards define how to establish and use web services that use SOAP/XML messages over HTTP or HTTPS to transfer data from the equipment to client applications.

So if all these standards already exist for defining EDA content, why was a Common Metadata necessary?

Although he wasn’t talking about SEMI Standards, I think Captain Barbosa in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl captured the reason best when he said, “The code is more what you would call guidelines than actual rules.” Within the standards there is a lot of room for interpretation regarding the details of how they are implemented. The EDA Common Metadata establishes more specificity around the guidelines for how the equipment data should be represented. The goal is to improve the quality and consistency of the data provided through the EDA interface so that host-side client applications can make better use of the data.

In 2010, ISMI announced a new Freeze Version of the EDA standards known as Freeze Version 2 or the 0710 Freeze Version. This defined the specific version of each of the individual EDA standards that should be used by equipment manufacturers to create an EDA interface. For more about the freeze versions for EDA/Interface A, read the Cimetrix Introduction to SEMI EDA/Interface A Standards.

The new SEMI 5002B document provides a single, agreed, interpretation of the various SEMI standards as represented in a common metadata definition, which will help drive consistency in how the standards are implemented. The consistency that should result from the new Common Metadata will help remove some of the uncertainty that may have prevented many companies from developing host-side client applications that can use the EDA data produced by the equipment.

by Brett Horsley
Customer Support Engineer

Back in December 2011 and January 2012, I posted a couple of blogs about the Customer License Generator. You can see what I wrote at New Web License Generator and Transfer a Cimetrix License To A New Machine. Our customers have been using the license generator and we have had a lot of very positive feedback.

One of our goals in developing the license generator is to improve support for critical systems.  When a hardware failure occurs on a vital piece of capital equipment running Cimetrix software, we know our customer – and our customer’s customer – cannot waste time waiting for a response.  Often replacing hardware or re-imaging a control system's operating system will require the Cimetrix license file to be transferred to new equipment. In past years,  Cimetrix customers would need to submit a license request via email and then wait for our license department to complete that request.  This process could cause significant delays, particularly if these requests came in during after-hours or on weekends.   

With the Customer License Generator, customers can request new licenses and license transfers online and receive their license file instantly, no matter what time of day they use it. Furthermore, even if the old license information is not-recoverable, the Customer License Generator can provide a 10-day demo license for a critical system, so they can get back online as soon as possible while we sort out any licensing paperwork. 

Getting equipment back into production can make or break business relationships.  Providing this level of support to our customers’ critical systems, whether they are on the production floor or in the lab, is important to us. If you are an existing customer, please try the Customer License Generator and let us know how you like it.

If you need help accessing or using our Customer License Generator, contact us at licenses@cimetrix.com.

by Rob Schreck
Marketing Manager

In March 2012, SEMI released a policy white paper that discusses the state of the photovoltaic (PV) solar industry in the United States and recommends actions the U.S. government should take to increase the manufacturing output and employment in the photovoltaic industry. The basis for the discussion is that the SEMI PV Group believes that solar is at the beginning of a long growth cycle.

Indeed, it is easy to understand the huge growth potential for solar. First, there is a rapid decline in the cost of generating solar power, as the paper explains (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

This cost decline is one factor in the rapid increase in demand forecasted by the International Energy Agency (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Second, the U.S. and many other countries are seeking alternatives to petroleum as a primary energy source. As Bettina Weiss, executive director, SEMI Photovoltaics Business Unit, stated in the announcement of the white paper “Despite a significant contraction in the global PV market this year, solar is at the beginning of long-term growth cycle and will be a major contributor to energy independence and help the U.S. to break from its reliance on fossil fuels.”  

We at Cimetrix are seeing an increased interest in the PV2 standard. Companies want to know how they should use the interface standard as they develop new equipment for the solar industry. We have updated our Cimetrix Introduction to SEMI Standards: PV2 (PVECI) white paper to provide a tutorial for anyone who wants to know more about the standard. 

By David Francis

Product Manager

As companies see the improvements in quality and efficiency resulting from the investment in automation over the last decade, there is a greater focus on gathering and analyzing factory data and turning it into actionable information. The implementation of the Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA)/Interface A standards will now allow the industry to further improve the efficiencies in the automated manufacturing facilities by providing access to large quantities of process data.

SEMI (www.semi.org) released the EDA standards in 2005 in order to support the communication between the factory’s data gathering software applications and the factory equipment.

There was no intention of replacing other standards, such as SECS/GEM or GEM 300, and, in fact, EDA does not provide any features for equipment control or configuration. Instead, the EDA standards focus on gathering more data–—particularly state information, sensor feedback, actuator states, and other raw data– necessary for process, product and equipment analysis.

During 2005, IC makers started requiring integrated EDA solutions from the equipment suppliers. Since then, the demand has continued to increase as IC makers roll out plans to improve yield and equipment utilization. Some of the reasons EDA is gaining in popularity are:

• EDA supports multiple concurrent clients. SECS/GEM, on the other hand, supports only one client connection, which means semiconductor fabs cannot run several data gathering applications at the same time without an infrastructure to share the data.
• EDA presents the data in a hierarchy, organized by the major hardware components. By comparison, SECS/GEM data is relatively flat and unorganized, which means that the fab must study the documentation, hardware, software, and processing in order to understand how to organize the data.
• While data in a SECS/GEM message is highly structured and relatively inflexible, EDA standards use XML, which is inherently designed to accommodate additional metadata
• SOAP/XML and HTTP are the backbone of most Internet and Intranet applications and there are many programmers worldwide familiar with this technology. On the other hand, only a few industries use SECS/GEM, which limits the worldwide expertise.

There have been developments in EDA/Interface A standards since their introduction. The industry adopted the initial ISMI 1105 freeze version in 2006, and then, four years later, ISMI announced a new 0710 freeze version that includes many improvements and some new capabilities. Cimetrix has learned that equipment suppliers and semiconductor fabs need to discuss and agree upon which freeze version – whether it is 1105 or 0710 – that will be used both for the equipment and the host. In addition, they need to ensure there is a clear understanding of the acceptance testing for the interface.

For more information about the SEMI EDA/Interface A standards, we recommend you request the white paper at Cimetrix Introduction to SEMI EDA/Interface A Standards.

Maybe in a few years we will look back and smile at how common place EDA has become!

By David Francis
Product Manager

I ran across an old issue of Future Fab International – Issue 6 – that I have had since it was published in 1998. I helped write an article that was published in this issue titled “Complete System Integration is Crucial to the Success of 300mm Manufacturing.” The article looked at changes that would be required in semiconductor manufacturing to support the move from 200mm wafers to 300mm wafers.

At the time, I was working for a software company that specialized in the development of Material Control Systems (MCS) for controlling Automated Material Handling Systems (AMHS). Most of the 200mm manufacturing facilities had implemented inter-bay transport systems that move material from one manufacturing bay to another, but within the bays, operators manually loaded wafers onto process or metrology equipment. Operators had to decide what work should be done next, or where the material should go after each process, after reviewing choices from a dispatch screen. There were islands of automation, but not much integration.

With the size, weight, and bulk of the 300mm carriers, transport systems would need to deliver material directly to the processing or metrology tool. This required very tight integration between the MCS, the dispatching system, and the factory Manufacturing Execution System (MES). In 1998 the GEM300 standards that would make all this possible had not been adopted very widely yet and were only starting to get semiconductor equipment suppliers’ attention.

This old article talked about the need for developing a reliable, low-footprint intra-bay transport system. It also explored the new concept of having the dispatch system make the decision about what work to do next rather than just suggesting what could be done. The MCS would need to interface with the dispatching system to be able to position material close to where it would be needed for processing.

The SEMI GEM 300 standards started gaining traction about the year 2000 and the idea of “lights out” manufacturing soon became a reality. It has been exciting to watch as the MES, dispatcher, AMHS and MCS systems have progressed and the fully automated, integrated manufacturing environment described in the article has become a reality.

While the move to 450mm wafers is probably still a few years off, I expect that transition will be much easier than the transition from 200mm to 300mm because of the work done for 300mm factories. The standards are well established, the control systems have matured, and the integration of the various components is very stable. It is exciting to see these future visions become common practice.

Recently, Cimetrix updated our Introduction to SEMI GEM 300 Standards white paper.  We have refreshed the content to answer some of the questions many people pose to us. Take a look and let us know what you think.

by Rob Schreck
Cimetrix Marketing Manager

We are seeing a significant increase in interest in the SEMI EDA/Interface A standards because semiconductor fabs have recognized they can turn the available data into useful and actionable information. For example, take a look at the recent blog post from David Francis on the adoption of EDA. One of the most important aspects of the use of the Interface A standards is that the semiconductor fabs and equipment suppliers need to communicate clearly with each other about which freeze version they will implement and how they will go about testing the connection.

Because of the Cimetrix experience and expertise in the use of, and software to implement, this standard, we are in a position to support the engineering community as they learn more about what is required to comply with EDA/Interface A.

We have recently updated our white paper on the Introduction to the SEMI EDA/Interface A standards white paper, and we encourage everyone using standards or finding out more about them to download the white paper.

By David Francis
Product Manager

This is an exciting time for Cimetrix as we see equipment suppliers and semiconductor fabs adopt the SEMI Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA)/Interface A standards. As equipment suppliers use our CIMPortal™ Plus software development kit, and fabs use our EDAConnect™ and ECCEsoftware, there is a growing awareness of how fabs can use the increased data that they gather to improve productivity and reduce unit costs.

One thing for certain is that equipment suppliers and semiconductor fabs need to communicate with each other effectively regarding their plans for implementing EDA. This includes determining which EDA Freeze Version they will use, freeze version 1105, freeze version 0710, or perhaps a mixture of both depending on tool type. The fab will also need to specify their equipment acceptance criteria. The acceptance tests need to be comprehensive, but optimized to keep the overall installation cost at a minimum.

To support equipment integration into the fab, the EDA interface can provide descriptions of the equipment's structure and behavior to the factory control systems. These metadata sets include the equipment components, the events and exceptions that can be reported, and all the available data parameters. A predictable and reliable interface definition enables faster equipment integration and lower installation cost.

To help ensure consistent metadata, ISMI is providing a tool to check for conformance of equipment metadata to EDA standards (such as E120 Specification of the Common Equipment Module and the E125Specification for Equipment Self-Description) and EDA guidelines. 

Cimetrix was at the forefront of the EDA/Interface A standards development and continues to be involved with the efforts around the new standards and the creation of the new EDA Client Connection Emulator (ECCE) version 2, which supports both 1105 and 01710 versions of the standards. It is great to see the broader adoption of the standards and the recognition of how the standards can help increase fab productivity.

To read more about SEMI EDA/Interface A standards, visit ourEDA/Interface A web page.

By David Francis
Product Manager

As Dave Faulkner, our Executive VP of Sales and Marketing mentioned in a previous blog post, Cimetrix attended SEMICON Japan in early December 2011. After the show closed on Friday December 9^th, I was able to join a group in Tokyo that was heading north to Tohoku, which was the area hardest hit by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, to assist with the ongoing effort to clean up after the devastation. The group I joined was the Mormon Helping Hands program sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Thirty-six of us boarded the bus and left at 10:00 PM, and we arrived at our hotel around 5:30 the next morning. We had a light breakfast, changed our clothes and by 6:30 AM we were back on the bus heading for the Rikuzentaka Volunteer Center for orientation and to receive our assignment for the day.

We were assigned to work in the Hirota area just south and east of what used to be the town of Rikuzentakata. The 2010 census listed the population of Rikuzentakata at 23,302. The small town was supposed to be protected by a seawall that was 6.5 meters (21 feet) high. But that seawall was no match for the tsunami, and more than 80% of the houses in town were swept away by the powerful wave.

The picture above is all that is left of the downtown area of Rikuzentakata.

The picture above shows what used to be a major shopping center. The lake in the foreground was the parking lot. The piles of rubble in the background are the remains of homes and businesses that have been gathered since the cleanup effort started in late March 2011.

We continued on to the village of Hirota. While the devastation was on a smaller scale, the force of the tsunami was still readily apparent. I found a picture online which shows the Ono beach seawall before the tsunami. The next picture is one I took of the same seawall as it looks today. You can see that the tsunami pushed large sections of the wall out of the way.

The Japanese government has done an amazing job of rebuilding the infrastructure – roads, power, water and sewer – and removing the major debris. But that has taken so many resources that the individual land owners have had to clean up their own property. The volunteers are there to help with that effort. Many of these people are elderly; some have little hope, having seen all of their processions and mementoes swept away in an instant. They still grieve for lost relatives and face an uncertain future. The volunteer effort provides them with physical help cleaning up and also gives them an emotional boost from seeing that so many people care about them and want to help.

Our group was assigned to work with three landowners who had houses directly behind the Ono beach seawall. In all 3 cases, there was nothing left but a foundation where their homes used to stand. They needed help in clearing the remaining rubble off their land so they can prepare for rebuilding. At one of the sites we cleaned, the only indication that a house was ever there was the water and power lines sticking up from the ground. It seemed that nature was somewhat discriminating as there was a house not more than 30 feet away and a little higher up the hill that had no damage.

Property before the clean up

Property after the clean up

Most of the property owners in the neighborhood where we were working are now living in temporary housing which was set up on the grounds of the nearby elementary school. As I looked around at the neighborhood, I was impressed with the number of vegetable gardens I saw. It seemed like the owners wanted some semblance of normalcy, something over which they could have control. So they cleared enough land to plant a garden. While we worked, I could hear a group of boys that had gathered at the Junior High School for a game of baseball. It was another sign that the community is trying to move past the disaster and continue on with life.

I was only there for one day, but it was inspiring to see the continuing efforts to rebuild. There is still a lot of work to do. l left Hirota wishing we could have done more.