Everything You Need to Know about the SEMI Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA) Standards

Class Modules

Module 1 – EDA Standards Suite

• Session 1 – Overview: Background, Motivation, Basics

  This session introduces the EDA standards at a high level, explaining the historical industry context that motivated the semiconductor factory automation community to define these standards, informed the initial set of functional requirements and performance expectations, provided the engineering and administrative resources to support this multi-year effort, and drove the implementation and validation processes to successful completion of the first version. 

  In summary, this session describes much of the “why” the EDA standards exist.

• Session 2 – Deeper Dive: Specifications, Interaction, Performance

  This session shows how the standards in the EDA suite work together to meet the requirements described in Session 1, describing the overall system architecture and component technologies used. It then goes into depth for each of the major standards, which include SEMI E120 (Specification for the Common Equipment Model), SEMI E125 (Specification for Equipment Self Description), SEMI E132 (Specification for Equipment Client Authentication and Authorization), SEMI E134 (Specification for Data Collection Management), and SEMI E164 (Specification for EDA Common Metadata). 

  Since it is more instructive to “see” data collection in action rather than imagining it through specifications and animated PowerPoint, this session includes demonstrations of the standards using equipment simulators and reference client (host) software to bring the EDA standards to life. 

  In summary, this session describes most of the “what” for the EDA standards.

Module 2 – Best Practices for EDA Standards Implementation and Testing

• Session 3 – Equipment Suppliers

  This session describes the implementation process an equipment supplier would use to provide an EDA interface on its equipment based on the requirements specified in the SEMI standards themselves and whatever additional information may be provided by their customer(s), the semiconductor manufacturers. Most of the best practices outlined in this session apply to EDA interface design and implementation whether or not the supplier chooses to build the interface in house or purchase and configure a third-party software package. 

  This session also covers the validation checklist defined and published by ISMI (International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative) in its “ISMI EDA Evaluation Method” and the use of standards validation software to automate most of this process.

  In summary, this session is a useful “how to” guide for equipment (and/or software) suppliers who want to implement the EDA standards.

• Session 4 – Best Practices for EDA Standards Implementation and Testing

  This session can be thought of as the “mirror image” of Session 3 and focuses on what the factory automation and equipment integration staff in the chip factories must do to implement the “client” (host) side of the EDA standards. Simply put, the factories are the collectors and consumers of the equipment and process data that are produced by the equipment. And as before, the topics covered in this session apply equally for in-house software development and the purchase of third-party software.

  Since the EDA standards do not explicitly define many of the practical aspects of a communications interface (e.g., computing platform on which the interface runs, content of the equipment metadata model, performance requirements such as data granularity, sampling frequency, total data volume), this session also describes a process for crafting the EDA sections of an equipment purchase specification; these additional requirements form the data collection “contract” between the equipment supplier and its customer so rather than leaving this important topic to chance.

  In summary, this session is a useful “how  to” guide for factories that want to make the most of the EDA interfaces on their purchased equipment.

Module 3 – Example Use Cases and Customer Benefits

• Session 5 – Equipment-focused Applications

  This session addresses the “How do these standards benefit your company?” question that may be posed to equipment suppliers who have chosen to implement the EDA standards. In fact, there are a number of applications that equipment suppliers can implement and sell that offer added value to their customers. 

  Examples include equipment/process characterization utilities, throughput monitoring, component and subsystem fingerprinting, AI/ML (artificial intelligence/machine learning) model development support, remote diagnostic support, among others. This session will explain how some of these applications can leverage the capabilities of the EDA standards without negatively impacting the factory customers’ equipment integration environment. 

• Session 6 – Factory-focused Applications

  This session answers the “Now what?” question that was actually posed to one of our standards promotion team when presenting the EDA standards at a standards technology seminar. At the time, he was focused on the detailed content and implementation process for the standards and didn’t have a satisfactory answer for why a factory would want to use these new (at the time) standards. 

  Such an excellent question deserved an equally excellent answer, so we spent the next 6 months meeting with the early adopters of the EDA standards to see what applications made particularly effective use of the EDA capabilities beyond what they had accomplished to date with the GEM/GEM300 standards. The applications outlines in this session are the result of those meetings and subsequent discussions.

Module 4 – Current Standardization Activities and Evolution

• Session 7 – Freeze 3 Technologies and Outlook

  This session covers the Freeze 3 release of the EDA standards suite, focusing especially on the recent technologies (e.g., gRPC, protocol buffers) that are being incorporated to improve data collection performance. It also compares Freeze 3 with the Freeze 2 version so people familiar with the current suite know what to expect. Finally, it will reference other standards that will impact the content of the SEMI E120/E125 equipment metadata model; examples include the GEM300 standards updates which now contain a set of “Well-Known Names” for common parameters and event, and SEMI E190/E190.1 (Equipment Data Publication) which go beyond E164 to list process-specific parameters that should appear in the EDA interface. 

  In summary, this session answers the question “What’s next?” for the EDA standards.

• Session 8 – Support for AI/ML-based Initiatives

  This session describes some of the unique and challenging characteristics of AI/ML-based systems that the EDA standards were (in hindsight) designed to support. This not only includes collecting massive amounts of detailed equipment and process data to feed these algorithms but also managing the available context information necessary for correct training and tuning machine learning models and selecting the appropriate model for a given production situation. Finally, this session will highlight a number of promising AI/ML use cases that have already been implemented.

  In summary, this session answers the question “How can I leverage the EDA standards to support the wave of AI/ML implementations currently and/or soon to be underway?”

Instructor

Alan Weber

Instructor Bio

Mihai Bodea

Instructor Bio

Sreeraj

Instructor Bio