Industry News, Trends and Technology, and Standards Updates

by Brian Rubow,
Principal Engineer

He Said…No I Didn’t
I have a lot of children—seven. Many of them are still young. Sure it is a lot of fun. However, more often than I like (yet not terribly often since I have really good kids), I get caught in the middle of a “he said/no I didn’t” dispute. That is where one of my children shows up in a huff to wherever I am and reports what “he said”, he meaning another one of my children. Then in the background I’ll hear the other one say either the “no I didn’t’ or the “but that’s because he said” response. And both kids look at me and expect the impartial judge (a.k.a. me) to do something. Each of them will give the impression of complete honesty and full recollection, yet they cannot agree about what happened or about what the other said.

My preference is to make them work it out. Still, I can’t help but wish that I could have recorded what actually happened so that if one of them is being a poop I can apply fair discipline. It would be really nice to attach a recording device to each of my children 24/7 to see what really happens. Would that be considered cruel or responsible parenting? Probably depends on whether you are the parent or child.

At Cimetrix, we deal with similar situations working with SECS/GEM communication. Sometimes either the host or equipment reports a problem. The host software says “the equipment said” and the equipment software says “but the host said”. And both look to an expert like me and want a resolution.

Often the best way to resolve the problem is to look at communication log files. Often enough when such problems occur the first time, neither the host nor the equipment was logging the SECS/GEM communication. Sometimes turning on communication logging in the host or equipment is more difficult than it should be. In a few cases, the host or equipment logging might not be trustworthy. The best solution is an impartial judge that records what both the host and equipment are saying so as to not rely on the host or equipment software.

But can that be done? The answer is yes. There is a free product called WireShark available on the internet at http://www.wireshark.org/. It is a network protocol analyzer, also called a “network sniffer”. It is really cool because it can capture all messages sent by the host and by the equipment without any modification to the host or equipment. Just configure it and run the problem scenario again.

Only it is not quite that easy. One problem is that WireShark does not have a plug-in to interpret the binary SECS/GEM message format (HSMS). If you are a SECS/GEM/HSMS guru that can readily and quickly interpret SECS/GEM messages in hexadecimal format, then this is a minor inconvenience. But for most of us that are too busy for such a tedious task, this is a major problem that makes WireShark impractical.

Fortunately, Cimetrix has a new product to resolve this, CIMSniffer. Under the hood, it uses the same network capturing libraries as WireShark, yet it has the capability to convert the messages into human readable SML formatted messages. You don’t have to wonder exactly what “the equipment said” or what “the host said”. You can record what they said yourself using a third-party software application. I wish I had this years ago. Too bad it won’t work with my kids.

For more information regarding the CIMSniffer product, please email sales@cimetrix.com.

You might also be interested in:

• Download the white paper on the SECS/GEM standards

by Vladimir Chumakov,
Software Engineer

HSMS or High-Speed SECS Message Services is a messaging protocol used in semiconductor and other industries as means for connecting to, controlling and gathering data from equipment inside the factory. HSMS provides means for independent manufacturers to produce implementations which can be connected and interoperate without requiring specific knowledge of one another.

Industry organizations, such as SEMI and ISMI, have been touting the benefits of the Interface A, also known as EDA, standards for years. This year, SEMI approved an important revision to these standards to incorporate many of the lessons learned from early implementations. In addition, SEMATECH member companies (which make up 50 percent of the worldwide chip market) wanted ISMI to focus on a smaller number of projects with short-term benefits for 2009. Interface A (EDA) is on this short list.

Want to learn more?

Cimetrix is hosting a FREE webinar outlining the features and benefits of the Interface A standards. The material will be presented by Doug Rust, Director of Quality Customer Support and co-chair of the SEMI North America GEM300 Task Force.

FREE WEBINAR: Interface A Features & Benefits
Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009
Time: 8:00 am MST/ 7:00 am PST/ 10:00 am EST/ 3:00 pm GMT
Duration: 1 hour

• The key features & benefits of Interface A
• Data & reporting features available through Interface A
• The role of Interface A in manufacturing

By Jentry Norse
AP/ AR Coordinator

As the Accounts Receivable Coordinator, people are not typically excited to hear from me. I’m a really nice guy and all… but usually, if you receive a call from me it’s about a past due invoice. And who likes receiving those calls?

Fortunately, we have very few past due accounts…and haven’t had to use a collection agency (although I get about 2 calls a month soliciting their services). With the industry slowly coming out of this slump, I myself have been pretty amazed at how open the lines of communication have been with the accounts payable departments of many of our customers.

In my opinion, communication is KEY. I rarely have to wait more than a day for a response to my collection efforts and feel like everyone is a little more aware of the need to know when payments can be expected especially during this difficult economy.

As much as I love talking to people, I feel the need to provide you (our customers) with some tips on how NOT to get a call from me (or how to not to continue to get calls from me):

1. Note your terms on each invoice and submit payment as soon as possible.
2. Make sure that you are sending your electronic payments to our new bank account (effective May 21, 2008). A memo was sent out last year; however, bank account information can be provided if you do not have it already.
3. We review our accounts receivables weekly and send out inquiries requesting payment status updates. If you receive one of these requests, please send a simple response letting us know when the invoice in question is scheduled for payment.
4. If we do not hear from you……..we will keep inquiring until we do.
5. We understand that many of you have to check with your purchasing departments and/or Project Coordinators and need a day or two to get back with us. We also realize your time is valuable and want you to know we appreciate your efforts and look forward to your correspondence.

If you have any questions (and would like to contact ME), please contact me directly at 801-256-6617 or jentry.nourse@cimetrix.com.

THANKS to the Accounts Payable / Purchasing departments of our many customers for their AWESOME communication! Your quick and friendly responses make my collection calls much easier.

Today, Cimetrix held its 2nd annual soup cook-off. With the our first big storm of the season right around the corner, a good bowl of soup seems very fitting for this time of year.

We had some excellent contenders with entries ranging from Elk Chili to Mexican Chicken Soup. Each member of the Cimetrix team takes the tasting process very seriously. There are sample cups - so that you can try just a little of each before getting a bowl of your favorite. However, I think most of us were full after just the tasters!

After a thorough tallying process, the winner was announced... Mark Bennett!  Not just a member of our experienced engineering staff, but also a remarkable cook.  His Zuppa Toscana won by a landslide. Congratulations Mark!

Download a copy of Mark's recipe here. 

by Bob Reback,
President and CEO

Running a company during an industry downturn presents quite a challenge. I have always thought I would someday be the president of a company. However, during this severe semiconductor down cycle, the thought that you should “be careful what you wish for” certainly came to mind a few times. Even though Cimetrix is a small company, successfully navigating a business through a severe downturn that hit the semiconductor industry requires a combination of critical thinking, tough decisions and a durable stomach.

The decision making process must consider the perspectives of all stakeholders - including investors, customers, employees and suppliers. The primary objective is clearly to make sure the business survives through the downturn. The secondary objectives relate to how to best satisfy customers, investors, employees and suppliers while making sure objective number one is met.

More than ever, this requires extensive communication with all parties. Not every party will be happy with your decisions. However, having sound analysis for your decisions, along with open and honest communications can ensure that all parties understand and, most importantly, accept the decisions.

Like almost all companies that serve the semiconductor industry, Cimetrix’s revenues suffered severe declines in the first half of 2009. The dramatic decline in revenues was the root cause of the crisis, as revenue brings in the necessary cash flow to pay employees and other business obligations. In addition, the severity of this down cycle caused more customers than anticipated to cease operations as a result of either bankruptcy or a parent company shutting down a division. Even though our primary competitor filed for bankruptcy and ultimately sold off its assets, there is no joy as you empathize for all of the affected employees without a job.

Fortunately, Cimetrix has a great team and everyone pitched in to help ensure the company successfully navigated through this down cycle. This includes our customers, employees, suppliers and investors. We are now seeing evidence that our customer’s businesses are starting to improve and the industry is on the mend, which is leading to increased revenues for Cimetrix. By retaining all of our key customers and a solid team of employees, we are well prepared and positioned for growing the business going forward.

There has been an underlying theme emerging in the semiconductor industry over the last couple of years. Do you know what it is? DATA. Give me more DATA.

Equipment suppliers today are required to support more than a dozen SEMI^® standards related to factory automation and a host of commonly used substrate-handling components such as robots and vacuum system hardware. More DATA.

They also need to support a new suite of “Equipment Engineering Capabilities” (EEC) including: e-Diagnostics, data collection, recipe management, data quality, fault detection and classification, run-to-run control and predictive maintenance. The key underlying factor for most of these features is... DATA.

Initiatives by other industry organizations, such as the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative’s (ISMI) 300mm NGF, also focus on... you guessed it, DATA. Increasing the accessibility of high-quality data, and then, using the data to improve efficiency and productivity. In addition, factories are also requiring DATA storage and access on and off the tool for future performance analysis.

Attend this week's FREE WEBINAR on "Using Data to Improve Equipment Efficiency and Performance" to learn about the significant manufacturing benefits gained from improved access to higher quality and quantity of data.

The webinar will take place on Thursday, October 22
at 8:00 am MT/ 4:00 pm UTC.

by Stu Benger,
Director of Sales, North America

I’d like to draw your attention to two recent articles by Tom Friedman, a renowned columnist for the NY Times and one of my favorite authors. Tom is far greener than I; however, as an old economics major, I agree with him that it is the economics of the conservation energy that is most critical to our nation generally and the fledging Solar industry specifically. In the first article Tom discusses the growth in Applied’s Solar business and laments that the factories are being built in China. 

In the second article Tom goes on to say that the efforts by the Chinese in PV and their focus on Green Energy should be seen as an event similar to the Russian launch of Sputnik back in the 60’s an event that should be a clear call for action to spur the American people. Sputnik led to the “Space Race” and innovation in every phase of American life from Tang to the internet, but mostly it led to a huge interest in technology. And by the end of the Space Race, America was the technology leader in about every facet of industry one could imagine. However, over the past thirty years, we have turned our interest from making things to making money. We have allowed our best engineers to turn from tweaking hardware for best performance to tweaking trading algorithms that produce a bit more for the hedge funds. I think we need to take a hard look at what Mr. Friedman is saying and call on our Politicians to do the same.

Solar Power is an industry poised for huge growth. The economics of the industry, the high degree of automation that can be used makes this an ideal industry that might just allow the American Manufacturing Sector a chance to crawl back from the dead. If we don’t, I’m afraid it will be a long time before the next opportunity presents itself and when it does it will only be because our children are the new low cost manufacturing site for a dominant Chinese economy.

Cimetrix is dedicated to improving the efficiency of solar cell production and actively seeking avenues for assisting the US solar industry to achieve this goal. We have been involved in the PV-EIS Task Force since its inception. A world-wide factory automation software supplier to the semiconductor industry, Cimetrix is an expert in the SEMI connectivity standards and has already been working with members of the solar industry to implement the new PV2 standard. We offer a complete set of proven and efficient equipment communication software solutions for PV manufacturing.

by Allyn Sullivan,
Software Engineer

I have recently worked with several customers who were in the process of building CIMPortal equipment models for their tools. Some were using the Equipment Model Developer (EMD) which ships with CIMPortal while others were programmatically building their models using the CxModel API. Working with both sets of customers, I saw a very real need for customers to develop programming tools to create equipment models instead of relying on the EMD alone.

Every model has a unique equipment configuration. Building an equipment model through the EMD is a laborious process. Each node of the equipment is added individually with a minimal amount of automation. Although suitable for those new to CIMPortal and initial model development, the EMD is not practical for building the many unique equipment models required for every tool configuration that a manufacturer makes.

Most manufacturers use a base tool to which they can add components to meet their customer's specification. Equipment configuration data can then be imported from the bill of materials (BoM), parts inventory, or other data from the manufacturing system of record. The model builder application can import this data (from a database or spreadsheet, for example) and use the CxModel API to generate several unique equipment models automatically. The application should be able to easily generate equipment models for any tool in the manufacturer's inventory.

Developing the proper tools that meet your individual needs is the most efficient way of creating equipment models for CIMPortal. You'll save time over using the EMD and have more consistent equipment models across tools.

by Bill Grey,
Director of Research & Development

Engineers often ask, “What are the differences between Interface A and SECS/GEM for data collection.” This is a high-level comparison of Interface A and SECS/GEM/HSMS-SS data collection features. We are working on some tools to help demonstrate Interface A data collection. More on that later….

Clients
Interface A supports multiple clients where SECS/GEM is usually a single client.

Security
Interface A can be configured for SSL secured communications. Only clients with a valid certificate can use the interface and all data across the wire is encrypted.

HSMS is not secured. In HSMS, any host that has the device ID can connect and data across the wire is binary encoded, but not encrypted.

Additionally, Interface A client features are gated by privileges where GEM features are not privileged.

Equipment Model
Interface A E125 provides methods for its client to upload a description of the logical structure of the equipment which includes parameters, events, and exceptions assigned to modules, subsystems, and IO devices. In this manner, each parameter, event, and exception has the context of the owning component.

In GEM, similar information is found in a manual provided with the equipment. Unfortunately, in most equipment manuals, the relationship of which component on the equipment produces the parameter, event, or exception is not available. Context is missing.

Traces
Interface A traces have features that GEM traces do not. Interface A traces have start and stop triggers. These triggers may include one or more events and/or exceptions. The trace would begin collecting data when any of the start triggers occurs and stop collecting data when one of the stop triggers occurs. This is useful as a trace for a processing module may be defined to start when a processing started event occurs and to stop when a processing completed event occurs for that module. In this manner, the Interface A client defines the trace once and collects the data only when processing is active. Between the triggers, data is collected at the specified rate. The rate is specified with a floating point number designating the number of seconds between samples. The resolution is limited by the equipment.

In GEM, traces begin when defined through a SECS message and end when the specified number of samples is collected. To achieve the same effect as Interface A, a host would have to define event reports for the processing module processing started and processing completed events. When the processing started event is received, the host would have to define the trace by sending a SECS message. When the processing completed event is received, the host would have to terminate the trace with a SECS message. The host would have to do this every time, unlike Interface A. There is a delay between the processing started event and when the trace starts because of the SECS messaging that isn’t there with Interface A. GEM traces are limited to centisecond resolution by the E5 standard even if the equipment could support faster traces. Some older GEM implementations are limited second resolution.

Event Reports
Interface A event reports specify an event and an optional set of parameters to be collected when that event occurs. The Interface A client activates the event report to begin monitoring the event and deactivates the report to stop monitoring the event.

GEM event reports are a little different. A GEM host defines collections of parameters called reports. Then it links one or more reports to one or more events. The same report may be linked to multiple events if needed. Then the host enables the event to begin monitoring the event and disables the event to stop monitoring the event.

Alarm Reporting
Interface A exception reporting is very different than GEM Alarm reporting. Interface A exception reports are defined using a source ID, exception ID, and severity. Any of the fields may be empty or filled in. Source ID identifies which component provides the alarm, for example a processing module or load port. If source ID is the only non-empty field, then all exceptions for that component will be monitored and reported. Exception ID identifies a specific exception name, if this is the only non-empty field, then all exceptions matching this name regardless of source will be monitored and reported. If severity is the only non-empty field, then all exceptions matching this severity will be monitored and reported regardless of source ID or exception ID. If more than one of these fields is non-empty, then reporting will be determined by applying Boolean AND logic to the fields. In addition, exception reports in Interface A may contain parameter data; however, which parameters are supplied with each exception is specified by the equipment manufacturer and not selectable by the Interface A Client.

GEM alarm reporting has two forms. For notification of an alarm being set or cleared, the host may enable alarms and receive a SECS message containing no other data. In GEM, each alarm has one set and one clear event that may be used for event reports. Using these events, the host may be notified of alarm set and clear transitions with reports that contain data chosen by the host.

Reports
Neither Interface A nor GEM provide annotated reports.

Data Collection Impact
Interface A E134 defines a mechanism for the equipment to limit the impact of client defined data collection on material processing. If data collection hinders processing, the equipment may issue a Performance Warning to all clients and deactivate their data collection. The equipment may resume data collection at a later time and issue a Performance Restored.

GEM defines no such throttling or notification mechanism.

You may also be interested in:

• Download the complete SECS/ GEM Overview
• Download the complete Interface A Overview
• View Cimetrix SECS/GEM Software Products
• View Cimetrix's Interface A Software Products