Industry News, Trends and Technology, and Standards Updates

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.

By Brett Horsley
Customer Support Engineer

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the  new Cimetrix web license generator, discussing how our customers with up-to-date support contracts can go on to the Cimetrix web site and get new licenses emailed to them in just a few minutes. We should also point out that customers can also transfer a license from an old machine to a new one from the same site.

When you go to the License Renewal site, which you can access using your Support login user name and password, you can apply to transfer the license using the old MAC ID and a new MAC ID.  You will also provide your email address and we will email you the new license immediately. You save time and effort, and you don't have to wait for any paperwork to go through.

When you go to the License Renewal site, you will enter the required fields in a form you see below:

You should have received the user name and password when your company purchased our SDK product. The license will be sent to your email address. If you are not an SDK customer, please contact the Cimetrix Licensing team at licenses@cimetrix.com, or call us at 801-256-6500.

Give it a try and tell us how you like the experience.  Any questions - just email licenses@cimetrix.com.

By Brett Horsley
Customer Support Engineer

We are working to streamline our processes at Cimetrix in order to improve our customer service. We now have a new license generator on the Cimetrix web site that we know will reduce the paperwork and throughput time to obtain new SDK and runtime licenses.

Previously, you had to email us the information and we would attempt to send you a new license within 24 hours. We almost always achieved that goal, but because of holiday schedules we sometimes took more than a day to send new licenses. 

Now with the new web-based license generator, you can go to the Cimetrix web site and log in using your Support user name and password. Then you enter your COA (Certificate of Authenticity) number, MAC ID, and email address, and you will get an email with your new license.

It's fast and easy.  We have tested out the process and it works well, but, if you run into problems, send us an email at licenses@cimetrix.com.

By David Faulkner
Executive VP, Sales and Marketing

It was great to attend SEMICON Japan this year and see our increased presence at the show.  I also wrote about it last year.

SEMICON Japan was held at the Makuhari Messe, near Chiba Japan, from December 7-9.  It overlapped with the PV Japan 2011 event, held on December 5-7, due to the request from Japan's government agencies to delay the event from its original July schedule in order to conserve energy and resources after the devastating Tohoku-Kanto earthquake and tsunami.  I attended both the SEMICON Japan and PV Japan events along with David Francis, the Cimetrix Product Manager, and Kerry Iwamoto, the Director of Cimetrix K.K.  While Cimetrix did not have a booth, we had a strong presence in booths of our distributors - Rorze and Meiden.  Both booths were on main aisles of the show and saw plenty of traffic.

In the Rorze booth, Cimetrix software was highlighted with marketing content and demonstrated running a 450mm vacuum cluster and EFEM.  This generated lots of attention on the main aisle.  Rorze has  a very unique offer for the equipment maker  because they can supply the equipment hardware platform along with all Cimetrix software, particularly Cimetrix CIMControlFramework. Rorze offers true one stop shopping when developing a new machine.

Meiden is our new distributor in Japan, and they dedicated a large part of their booth to highlight Cimetrix products and the EDA (Interface A) solution they have designed for a major memory manufacturer in Japan.  Meiden engineers are now trained in Cimetrix software products and they are supporting Cimetrix customers in Japan.  Their offering is unique because they supply industrial PCs to a large percentage of Japanese equipment suppliers and have an army of integration engineering resources to help equipment suppliers. 

The show was crowded, and apprehension existed as the industry ponders the European debt crisis and smaller growth for both chip sales and equipment sales in 2012.  There was also a lot of excitement and enthusiasm as the industry contemplates 450mm manufacturing and Interface A deployments to GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Toshiba and TSMC.

It will be an interesting year as we see what develops.

By Jentry Nourse
HR Coordinator

No summer would be complete without the annual Cimetrix Picnic.  We had a fantastic turnout this year.  With a headcount of 68, it may be the largest picnic to date.

Last year we added seventeen new members to the Cimetrix team - 7 are from Utah, 9 are located in Texas, and 1 resides in Las Vegas.  We were able to coordinate an engineering conference the same week which allowed us to bring everyone to Salt Lake for an afternoon full of food, fun and conversation.

The picnic was held at our usual pavilion at Murray Park.  With several options such as horseshoes, Frisbee, croquet, soccer, volleyball, baseball, a face painting station, and a snow cone machine, there was something for everyone, including the dogs!

We kicked off the picnic with a music set provided by David Francis’ son Austin and daughter Jessica, who played several upbeat tunes on the violin for us.  Jessica Francis recently won the Miss Farmington Scholarship Competition and performed “Orange Blossom Special” and “Millionaires Hoedown”, the same songs she performed during the talent show of the pageant. 

This was a perfect way to begin the festivities and everyone was impressed with Jessica and Austin’s talent, as well as their willingness to come entertain us.  They were so good we asked for an encore.

Working in the HR department, I see the names of spouses and family members on a daily basis.  I always enjoy this opportunity to put a face with a name and know that everyone in attendance felt the same.  We even had name tags so everyone could figure out who belonged to whom.

Despite my efforts, none of the upper management came prepared with their Karaoke assignments.   I’ll make sure to hand them out earlier next year so no one can claim they were put on the spot.

It’s nice to be able to associate with your coworkers outside of the office environment.  Sitting back and observing everyone, it occurred to me what a really outstanding team we have.  I enjoy talking to every employee here at Cimetrix and look forward to many future picnics.

By David Francis

Product Manager

ISMI held a very successful EDA/Interface A workshop at SEMICON West in July, and Cimetrix was a guest speaker at the workshop.  The attendance and interest in EDA was surprising, given that EDA has been discussed for five years with very little adoption to-date.  Now, however, we see a major change occurring.

In November 2005, ISMI established the first freeze version of the Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA) Standards to enhance adoption by eliminating the “moving target” issue; it was known as the 1105 Freeze Version. The industry had good reasons for developing EDA. Fabs could get significantly higher trace data collection throughput, and the robust tool model in EDA provided better access to sensors and other key equipment variables useful for operational data monitoring.  Moreover, EDA greatly simplified the creation of data collection plans (DCP), so fab engineers could resolve manufacturing problems faster and easier. Best of all, it decoupled data collection from SECS/GEM, so data collection would not be influenced by tool control nor would tool control performance be impacted by collection of large quantities of data.  The result would be that fabs would benefit from more sophisticated automatic process control (APC) algorithms, improved yields, and reduced downtime.

Unfortunately, only a few brave equipment suppliers started work on developing interfaces for their equipment to comply with the 1105 Freeze Version. Not surprisingly, the general adoption and excitement in the industry around EDA didn’t last long in the absence of strong support from semiconductor manufacturers and foundry customers.

Why? It generally takes a significant amount of time for equipment suppliers and semiconductor manufacturers to review the standards and introduce new systems to deliver and consume the data. In the case of EDA this was further compounded because of bad timing in the industry.  The 1105 freeze version of EDA came out during a boom time for the semiconductor industry, when fabs want to avoid making significant changes that could disrupt production.  By the time the equipment vendors could develop new systems with an EDA interface, the industry experienced the biggest – and fastest – downturn in history.  In 2008-2009, semiconductor companies were buying very few new machines, let alone starting new fabs.

But, when business in the industry turned back up in 2010, both GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Toshiba announced they would build new 300mm fabs, and would require OEMs to supply new equipment with an EDA interface.  In addition, there are other semiconductor manufacturers and foundries who are investigating and starting to use EDA, but have not been as vocal about adopting the standard.

 GLOBALFOUNDRIES Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany

Also in 2010, ISMI announced the second freeze version (the 0710 Freeze Version) of the EDA Standards. Since that announcement, there has been a lot of interest and activity in the industry surrounding Interface A. One reason, obviously, is that the two large semiconductor manufacturers have added Interface A to their equipment purchase specifications and acceptance criteria, so equipment suppliers want to ensure that their products comply with these new requirements.

But there are other reasons for interest in EDA.  The 0710 freeze version provides a number of simplifications and clarifications of the 1105 freeze version. For example, there is better linkage between the SECS/GEM events and variables and the EDA constructs, and the metadata is simpler. There have also been other changes, like using simple events as an alternative to complete state machines, and allowing DCP behavior to be separate for each client. As the industry tackles 3D designs with ever smaller geometries, the process window gets a lot narrower and access to data and applications to consume this data become imperatives instead of “nice-to-haves.”

In addition, ISMI has updated its EDA Guidance document to more fully describe how to implement EDA interfaces. In parallel, ISMI partnered with Cimetrix to develop the new version of the Equipment Client Connection Emulator (ECCE) that OEMs and semiconductor manufacturers can use to verify EDA interfaces (see New Freeze Version of Interface A Requires New ECCE Version). Finally, the ISMI/NIST Metadata Conformance Analyzer (MCA) is also available to check for conformance of equipment metadata to the applicable portions of the SEMI standards and ISMI guidelines.

It is exciting to see the renewed interest and attention to EDA. Is all the attention because semiconductor manufacturers are starting to require EDA, or are semiconductor manufacturers starting to require it because of all the recent interest? Either way, there are genuine opportunities for both equipment suppliers and semiconductor manufacturers to make use of data collected through EDA to improve efficiencies and open new capabilities for microelectronics manufacturing.

by Scott Gardner

Senior Software Engineer

I’ve been a software engineer for more years than I care to remember (or than I’m willing to say). My experience includes embedded microcontroller-based applications, database and accounting software, and GUI development. I’ve always been interested in controlling hardware with software but the semiconductor industry and factory automation was not part of my experience. When I became part of the team in May, I was excited to get started, but also somewhat apprehensive. I was concerned about how quickly I would be able to learn all the new material and become a productive member of the team—a daunting task when you consider I had to learn both the new industry and code base. I was prepared to spend many extra hours coming up to speed.

My first day at Cimetrix began with Boot Camp. It seemed like everyone was talking about or working on something to do with Boot Camp. I didn’t know what it was but it sure had everyone busy. It didn’t take long to realize that Boot Camp was all about training.

This was training in a way I had never experienced before. People from different companies came from all over the country to Cimetrix—our own little United Nations, you might say! One thing that immediately impressed me was the level of enthusiasm among all involved. 

We were introduced to the industry and the science. The physics involved is mind boggling! It was very cool to get to touch a real wafer while learning how they were made. This was training that included not only theory but also practical application—it was very hands on.

The software was equally impressive. Of course we went through the standard installation and demos but that was just the start. The entire CIMControlFramework architecture and tool control design process was laid out, and the trainers presented us with a series of labs that progressively got us deeper and deeper into the Cimetrix software, not only the CCF tool control product, but also CIMPortal (for Interface A) and CIM300 (for GEM 300 connectivity). The best thing about the labs is that by the time we had worked through them we not only had a working system we also knew how the system worked. I still use my completed labs today.

Agile was introduced in a gentle but accelerated way. We did scrum standups twice a day and a retrospective daily. We learned what makes a good user story and how to handle product backlogs and spring planning. We each got to keep a deck of planning poker cards.

Remote collaboration was also given a serious look.  We learned how to use a number of tools in order to communicate effectively with each other and plan sprints. This part of the training brought everyone together as a team and how we need to communicate with the “Product Owner”, who is often the project leader employed by our customer.

I’ve seen quite a few approaches to development but this was a very different experience for me.  It was obvious that these guys take training seriously. This was training the way training was meant to be done!

by Rob Schreck

Marketing Manager

We had a very successful booth at SEMICON West in San Francisco earlier this month.  The attendance was good, we had a lot of booth traffic, and we had the opportunity to demonstrate the new CIMControlFramework software release to booth visitors looking for a solid tool control solution. What seemed of particular interest was how they can quickly obtain a graphicaly understanding of process status and alarms that give them actionable data to help improve performance and increase quality. It was good to see the buzz generated by our latest tool control release.

Another topic that attracted visitors to our booth was how Cimetrix uses the Agile design process.  They were impressed we are using Agile -  in both our R&D as well as Cimetrix Engineering Services - to get demonstrable software faster and predict schedule completion much more accurately.  Another aspect of Agile was how engineers can learn a team development approach, even in situations in which they are working with colleagues who are remote.  Many of our visitors were also interested in our pilot program to get them started using both CIMControlFramework software and Agile processes for their next design project.

We came away from the show with a long list of people looking for a more complete product demonstration and a better understanding of some of the needs of our customers and prospective customers.  It was a great show and we are looking forward to SEMICON West 2012.

By David Francis

Product Manager

Shortly after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan last March, I read an article that talked about the impact to the semiconductor fab lines in Japan. The article indicated that even those Japanese facilities not directly hit by the crisis were still dealing with power outages and aftershocks. The article also talked about how Japan is the leading producer of the raw silicon used in semiconductor manufacturing. It seemed clear that the effects of the disaster would be felt throughout the semiconductor industry.

I had the opportunity to travel to Japan a couple of weeks ago to visit our distributors and customers. It has been a few months since that article was written, so I was curious to see how things were progressing.  I had heard that the Japanese government had requested businesses to take steps to reduce power consumption by 15% to help avoid possible blackouts due to the loss of the power from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant that was damaged by the tsunami last March. Recent news articles also mentioned that companies could be fined if they didn’t hit the reduced power targets. Hearing all this, I wasn’t sure what I would find once I arrived in Japan.

What I found was a country moving forward and doing what was necessary to keep things progressing toward a full recovery. One example is how practices that had been ingrained in the culture over many years were changing as a response to power shortages.  For example, businesses were responding to the government’s requests and turned up the thermostats. Several of our meetings were held in conference rooms where the thermostat read 27°C (about 80°F). In some meetings the air conditioning was turned off altogether.

Another change that was surprising was the change in how people dressed. The Japanese government started the “Super Cool Biz” campaign and asked businesses to change many of their ingrained practices, including a dress code that encouraged short-sleeve shirts instead of suits and ties! Many of the companies I visited also had signs in their lobbies that talked about “Cool Biz.” Everyone seemed to be on board with the initiative – it was mentioned in most of the meetings I attended.

Here is a picture of Dave Faulkner, Kerry Iwamoto, and our Cimetrix Japan financial staff:

It is amazing to see how people in Japan pull together when times are tough.  There is no doubt the recovery process will take years. I don’t know what the full effect will be to the semiconductor industry, but the semiconductor equipment companies visited on this trip were all working with determined focus to meet their shipment schedules. The distributors and integrators I met with are continuing to plan for and execute projects to install equipment in new factories.