By James Amano, Senior Director, International Standards & EHS, SEMI
SEMI recently celebrated the publication of the 1,000th SEMI international Standard during SEMICON West 2019 and the efforts of all the industry volunteers that have made the Standards Program essential to semiconductor manufacturing for the last half century. Our CEO, Ajit Manocha, often comments that SEMI Standards are the “oxygen of the industry”, driving down manufacturing costs and increasing factory efficiency while improving worker safety, making smaller, faster and smarter devices that have transformed the way we live and work.
While the Program’s initial focus was on a fundamental specification for silicon wafers, it has evolved over the years to meet the needs of our industry. This release of Standards Watch highlights several examples of this evolution, looking at newly published standards for PCB manufacturing equipment communication, surface mount technology, and electron microscopy workflow, as well as a critical new effort addressing fab and equipment information security and a promising new committee in China to tackle power semiconductors.
These evolutionary activities are important, but as the global Standards team starts work on our next 1,000 Standards, we need our members to guide us from “evolution” to “revolution”. What are the next big topics where SEMI Standards will move the needle? Big data? Artificial intelligence? Quantum computing?
It’s difficult to overstate the impact that SEMI Standards have had in fueling the remarkable innovation of the semiconductor industry, but there’s still lots of work to do! Given the massive knowledge and creativity resident in our 5,000+ industry experts, though, I’m confident our next 1,000 Standards will bring a revolution.
Standards Watch
SEMI
www.semi.org
September 12, 2019