North America

The United States leads the world in COVID-19 vaccine availability and is on pace to amass the supply necessary to inoculate its full population by July, a leading business consulting firm said at a recent SEMI webinar.

When COVID-19 hit the semiconductor industry, SEMI members were confronted with new hurdles to keeping their employees safe and their operations running uninterrupted. We quickly assisted our global membership around the globe by providing a forum for collecting member insights on best practices for operating and safety procedures, supply chain issues and sentiments on business impact and recovery. That forum took the form of surveys we launched in March 2020. We shared the results with the larger SEMI member community to help them cope with the evolving impacts of the pandemic on their businesses. Following is a summary of our 4th survey, issued last month. Regional and Sector Representation Nearly 40% of our respondents represented companies headquartered in North America. Of the respondents, 10% each were from companies headquartered in Taiwan and China; 5% from Korea, 13% from Japan and 20% from European and Middle Eastern members. The largest share of respondents – 40% – develop equipment for semiconductor fabrication, assembly, and test; 21% supply materials to the microelectronics industry; 14% are device makers; 6% supply software and design services; and 3% are OSATs, EMS suppliers or ODMs. Measures Member Are Taking to Continue Operations The May survey found that almost no companies ceased production for any significant length of time. In order to continue operations, companies instituted social distancing and masking requirements, temperature checks, schedule changes, and some contact tracing, all to varying degrees, as shown in Figure 1. In addition, several companies implemented some combination of mandatory testing, bump sensors, air purification and site capacity limits and sequestered foreign workers in separate housing for required quarantines after travelling. Figure 1 All of these measures are routinely discussed during the regular SEMI EHSS COVID-19 Working Group calls. That group consists of facilities, HR managers and others tasked with ensuring safety monitoring and compliance at member companies. Company Vaccination Policies With the pace of vaccine rollouts varying widely around the world, only 5% of respondents are requiring all workers to be vaccinated before returning to the office, and 12% have not yet considered a vaccine policy. The majority of companies are encouraging but not requiring employee vaccinations, and 26% leave the decision to the individual employees. Figure 2 North American companies constituted the majority of the required and encouraged vaccination categories. In Europe, companies fall into the employee decision or encouraged categories but none require vaccinations. Japanese companies primarily leave the vaccination decision to employees, while Chinese companies are split among the required, encouraged and employee decision categories. Clearly, these guidelines are not required by law in each region, but instead fall to employers and local policymakers. Member Readiness for Digital Transformation A solid majority of members reported they have invested in the adoption of digital transformation technologies and practices, though only about 14% expect to continue their digital investments in the coming year. Many respondents have deployed virtual meeting software and have implemented or plan to put in place virtual reality tools for remote diagnostics and predictive modeling for semiconductor manufacturing. Figure 3 Location by Functional Group in Returning Employees to Sites Not surprisingly, manufacturing and distribution staff that could work from home during the pandemic are back on site, and respondents signaled that R D and engineering groups will soon end their remote work, following by finance and procurement. Sales and marketing show the highest percentage of staff working remotely, with sales having the highest number remaining remote for some time to come. Figure 4 Resilience to Further Economic Uncertainty Of the 274 companies responding, 229, or 84%, feel more resilient in the face of further economic uncertainty after their response to COVID-19, though continuing supply chain issues and raw materials shortages ranked among their top concerns, as did rising customer demands, their ability to increase capacity utilization rates, and the increasing demands on employees and facilities overall. Figure 5 Many thanks to all survey respondents over the past year! We’ll keep you up to date on results of future surveys. For more details on the SEMI EHSS COVID-19 Working Group calls, visit the SEMI COVID Response Site. To watch the recording of our most recent CEO Webinar – Surging Chip Demand, Digital Transformation, and the Pandemic – What’s Next? – click here. More than 750 people attended the June 2nd webinar sponsored by SEMI members Brooks Automation, Hitachi, JCET, KLA and TEL. Heidi Hoffman is senior director of Technology Communities marketing at SEMI.

The global economy has started down a gradual path to recovery from COVID-19 in recent months as the world continues to combat the virus. Yet one sector – semiconductors – has shown impressive growth powered by a transformation hastened by the pandemic across industries ranging from education and work-from-home to healthcare.Semiconductor sales increased 12% in September to mark a second consecutive month of double-digit growth, and year-to-date semiconductor receipts as of September jumped 5.5% compared to the same period in 2019, according to SIA/WSTS.While this upward trajectory is encouraging, it pales compared to 2020 semiconductor equipment billings growth, with results from SEMI showing worldwide global chip equipment billings in September soaring to a new high of $7.6 billion this year. During the first nine months of 2020, aggregate equipment billings logged a 23.6% rise compared to the same stretch in 2019, surpassing $51 billion. Better still, the total semiconductor equipment market in 2020 is on track to beat the previous high of $64.5 billion set in 2018.Investments in China, Taiwan and Korea are fueling the chipmaking equipment spending surge. With big domestic and international fab projects in the works, China this year is projected to become the world’s largest capital equipment market for the first time, surpassing Taiwan, which will follow at a close second. Korea will rank third in equipment investments. Taiwan and Korea growth will come on the strength of equipment spending for manufacturing leading-edge semiconductors.Equipment billings in North America and Europe declined year-over-year as the automotive and industrial sectors suffered the heaviest blows from COVID-19. Investment momentum in both regions is expected to pick up in 2021 after automotive production recovers to pre-pandemic levels while factory automation will boost industrial demand.For more information about monthly equipment billing trends by region and equipment segment, please see the SEMI Equipment Market Data Subscription.Clark Tseng is director of Industry Research and Statistics at SEMI.

The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted major impacts on manufacturing operations worldwide including in the semiconductor industry. The virus has left millions of people confined to their homes, resulting in a massive shift to virtual work and online engagement. In Singapore, where AEM is headquartered, our management team took proactive measures to protect our workers by implementing best practices ahead of the Singapore Circuit Breakers.AEM is globally deemed an essential service, requiring us to maintain operations and minimize impact to our customers. Business continuity plans that include work-from-home and safe-distancing guidelines are in place. As of the time of this writing, we are very fortunate that all of our employees are safe and that we’ve seen only minimal impacts to our customer commitments. AEM has confined this impact by spreading operational risks across our facilities in Asia, Europe, the U.S. and divisions in Singapore, Malaysia, China, North America, Central America, Finland, France and Vietnam. All told, these facilities employ more than 550 people (Figure 1).Figure 1 – AEM Global Presence As a global leader, AEM offers application-specific intelligent system-level test and handling solutions for semiconductor and electronics companies that serve the advanced computing, 5G communications and artificial intelligence (AI) markets.Leveraging our decade of experience, the latest AMPS solutions provide asynchronous, modular, massively parallel and smart system-level testing to meet the new test challenges of complex ICs. The modularity and scalability of these systems enables customers to scale their existing engineering device validation solutions into high-volume, massively parallel production solutions that increase faults coverage, reduces time to market, and decreases cost of test and ownership (Figure 2).Figure 2 – AMPS System-Level Test Solution In meeting 5G infrastructure test needs, AEM developed a field-deployable fiber optics tester. Called WideOptix SR4, the system was initially developed in collaboration with a world leader to support the 5G fiber infrastructure deployment in China and has now been adopted for some Ethernet standards testing. With our WideOptix SR4 development, we cultivated Silicon Photonics (SiPh) testing expertise that complements our AMPS system-level test capability. As part of our business continuation and risk diversifications plan, we had also set up factories in Penang (5,200m2) and Suzhou (3,600m2). Penang’s rising influence in the Southeast Asia semiconductor industry has prompted AMM (AEM Malaysia) to expand its scope to include value-added services with a Center of SSD Excellence and Center of Photonic Excellence.ASZ (AEM Suzhou) will continue to focus on the domestic market in China for further expansion and penetration with products ranging from cost-sensitive testers to state-of-the-art test measurement instruments. In Europe, AEM is focused on wafer-level test and cost-effective ATE test solutions. Finland-based AFORE specializes in MEMS and application-specific wafer testing with the ability to add physical stimulus. The company's state-of-the-art instruments enable the testing of devices such as diced IMU’s (Inertia and Motion Units) in continuous rotation on a wafer mounting ring. Our process increased test throughput by 3X compared to the traditional pick-and-place methods (Figure 3).Figure 3 – Wafer-Level Test Throughput Advantage A specialist in application-specific wafer handling, AFORE developed its latest design to support quantum computing in collaboration with its partner BLUE FORS. The company’s probing equipment features a handling solution with temperature tolerances to 2K (-270’C) to support cryogenic testing (Figure 4).Figure 4 – Cryogenic Quantum Computing Probing Solution AFORE also gained critical insights into creating total darkness, enabling us to further explore opportunities for dark matter testing. AFORE is currently in talks with a member of the LUX Photonics Consortium funded by the National Research Foundation (Singapore) to provide a dark body testing environment and handling for its IR detectors.In Europe, our acquisition of Mu-TEST in France helps diversify our product and service offerings while spreading our business continuity risks. Mu-TEST enjoys collective test-development experience of more than 320 man-years thanks to various ATE suppliers including Schlumberger and Credence. To help combat rising costs of traditional ATE, Mu-TEST developed cost-effective solutions using FPGA-based instruments supported by a full suite of test development, debug and production test software with links to EDA and standard interfaces. This provides Mu-TEST an agile platform that can be easily re-configured for different customer needs.This Mu-Test acquisition expands AEM’s system-level testing capability to include Functional Test, allowing BIST, SCAN, JTAG to test structural failures and perform other application-level test that interface directly with the DUT using the EVM (Electronics Validation) boards to increase fault coverage within the same test environment. Mu-TEST has also enabled AEM to form the recent partnership with UTAC to develop a cost-effective CIS test solution that addresses UTAC’s test needs and complements its CIS advanced packaging solutions. Our U.S. headquarters based in Chandler, Arizona has expanded its capabilities to provide application engineering.In summary, AEM has been expanding its global footprint while managing risk and has been fortunate to be positioned to manage the recent COVID-19 excursions. While each geographical location specializes in core technologies, all sites have access to one another’s manufacturing facilities in times of need and a pool of IP available to address new opportunities. We believe this risk diversification positions us well to serve the needs and interests of our customers worldwide.Lo Wee Tick is Director, Business Development, and Stuart Pearce is Senior Director, Field Marketing, at AEM Holdings Ltd.

The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the United States has reached final terms on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement (USMCA). The USMCA provides important modifications and updates to the 25-year old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and SEMI supports its timely ratification in the U.S. Congress. The USMCA includes significant provisions to protect continued innovation and North American market access across product design and manufacturing supply chains for the electronics industry. The agreement strengthens requirements for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights, including trade secrets. The U.S. microelectronics industry will benefit greatly from USMCA’s strong enforcement mechanism for the misappropriation of trade secrets including civil procedures and remedies, criminal penalties, and judicial procedures to prevent disclosure of trade secrets in litigation.The agreement also establishes new rules to enhance and protect digital trade to benefit companies of all sizes and consumers. The USMCA prohibits tariffs, taxes and other barriers to cross-border data flows and minimizes restrictions on where data can be stored and processed. These provisions establish important precedents for data and digital technology in future trade agreements. The USMCA aligns with SEMI’s core principles including open global markets, fair competition and the protection of intellectual property rights. Mexico and Canada are two of the United States’ most important trading partners, and strengthening the three countries’ mutual obligations under USMCA will greatly benefit SEMI members. SEMI welcomes final passage of the USMCA and the critical certainty it will bring to trade rules within North America going forward.Joe Pasetti is Vice President, Global Public Policy Advocacy, at SEMI.

Environmentally sound policies and the health and the safety of workers in the microelectronics supply chain are vitally important to SEMI and its members. For more than two decades, together we have focused on worker safety by focusing on global environment, health and safety (EHS) compliance and regulatory issues and the advancement of sound EHS practices. Today, EHS has taken on an even higher profile in the microelectronics industry with its growth across Europe, North America and Asia. Never has the industry been under greater scrutiny. The list of regulatory agencies is growing. To keep pace with rising EHS requirements and continue to ensure worker safety, we’d like your help. The SEMI EHS summit will open with a keynote presentation from Russ LaMotte, Managing Principal of Beveridge Diamond, and a recognized expert on EHS issues in the electronics industry. Member companies representing equipment, materials, facilities and devices will then each share their EHS concerns. Finally, working groups will address industry EHS challenges and gaps. Outputs from the working group meetings will form the basis for the future SEMI EHS program. The EHS issues SEMI’s program and company volunteers are addressing include: PFOA – Government efforts to eliminate pefluoro-octanoic acid and related compounds and salts (collectively known as PFOA) from company supply chains REACH – A European Union regulation to strengthen protections against chemical risks to human health and the environment. Other countries – Japan, Korea, Taiwan – have enacted similar regulations. Stockholm Convention – An international environmental treaty designed to eliminate or restrict the production and use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) Waste Framework Directive Database – The European Commission and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) are building a database where all suppliers will be required to register certain articles. Other groups are dealing with country-specific aspects of the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Complementing our advocacy efforts, SEMI has established 25 primary EHS standards with SEMI S2 (Safety) as the cornerstone. The S2 family of SEMI Standards acts as performance-based EHS considerations for semiconductor manufacturing equipment and has also been adopted by adjacent industries. Sign up for the November 29th SEMI EHS Summit today Team up with your SEMI colleagues to collectively formulate the semiconductor manufacturing industry’s EHS program. SEMI members can register for the November 29th SEMI EHS Summit by clicking here. If you cannot make this meeting but wish to be added to SEMI’s regular communication on EHS and Advocacy issues, please click here and choose Advocacy from the list of topic choices. Michael Ciesinski is vice president of the FlexTech Alliance, a SEMI Strategic Association Partner chartered with building up infrastructure for flexible electronics manufacturing.

Thanks to you and the more than 5,000 other industry experts who contribute your time and brainpower, the SEMI Standards Program is celebrating its 45th anniversary in 2018. The first SEMI Standards meeting was held in 1973 to create a dimensional specification for silicon wafers. At the time, the proliferation of more than 2,000 different wafer specifications had led to major inefficiencies as the industry was just getting underway. To address this problem, wafer suppliers gathered under the auspices of SEMI and quickly developed consensus specifications for 2-inch wafers, and by the mid-1970s over 80 percent of wafers being shipped conformed to the new standard.Since that time, the SEMI Standards Program has expanded both geographically and technically. The program now has 20 technical committees in China, Europe, Japan, Korea, North America, and Taiwan, tackling manufacturing challenges across the electronics supply chain. Critical milestones include the development of SEMI S2, the comprehensive safety guideline that has drastically reduced industry incidents and continues to be updated to keep up with the hazards associated with semiconductor manufacturing, and the SECS/GEM and EDA suites of equipment communication standards, which are the backbone of modern day semiconductor “Smart Manufacturing.”As we commemorate our 45th year, there has never been a more diverse and active agenda as we look to solving issues in new areas such as Fan-Out Panel Level Packaging, Electron Microscopy Workflow, and flexible hybrid electronics. Of course, the Standards Program owes its success and longevity to you. I am repeatedly amazed by the dedication of Standards Members, and look forward to continuing the industry collaboration – together we can make the next 45 years as fun and productive as the first!As SEMI president and CEO Ajit Manocha has stated, “SEMI Standards is the oxygen of the industry.”SEMI Standards has saved the industry untold billions of dollars by defining interoperability specifications, guidelines and test methods that have streamlined semiconductor manufacturing and ensured the smooth operation of hundreds of pieces of equipment – all working automatically 24X7.What's more, SEMI Standards has enabled the production of more than 2.2 billion wafers and 1.8 trillion IC devices. Referenced more than 10 million times in production fab purchases, more than 25 SEMI Standards, on average, are cited in each purchase order for semiconductor equipment and materials in the electronic manufacturing ecosystem.