Background
For the first time, the SEMI North America Information & Control Committee held its meetings at SEMICON West at the Phoenix Convention Center. As usual, the meetings were conducted in a hybrid format, allowing attendees to participate either in person or remotely.
The first two days were dedicated to task force meetings, including GEM 300, ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration), GUI, CDS (Fab & Equipment Computer & Device Security), and DDA (Diagnostics Data Acquisition), all led by Cimetrix task force leaders. The third day was reserved for the committee meeting, where final decisions were made, typically based on recommendations from the task forces.
This summary highlights key developments from selected task force sessions and the committee meeting.
Please note that all ballots approved by the committee are subject to final review by the global SEMI Audit & Review Committee. Although rare within the North America Information & Control Committee, ballots can still fail if SEMI procedures and regulations are not strictly followed.
A SNARF (Standards New Activity Report Form) must be approved by the technical committee before a task force can submit a ballot proposing a new standard or changes to an existing one.
For more detailed information, SEMI maintains a comprehensive website covering global committee activities:
New Digital Twin Task Force
In this session, a new Digital Twin for Manufacturing task force was formed. This was initiated by James Moyne an Associate Research Scientist in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Michigan and a long-time SEMI standards participant and co-leader on the Information & Control Committee. This new task force will focus on developing standards related to digital twins, such as developing a framework to manage a digital twin. Jame, Brian Rubow, and a few others will lead the task force. Please join the task force if you are interested!
GEM 300 Task Force
In the GEM 300 task force (and later in the committee) 3 ballots passed related to fixing well-known variable issues related to E30, E40, and E87. The ballot to revise the E192 Guide for Equipment Adoption Criteria for GEM and GEM-Related Standard failed, but for minor reasons that can easily be corrected in the next revision of the ballot.
Ballot 7345 to revise the E90 Specification for Substrate Tracking ballot failed due to controversy surrounding the technical approach proposed in the ballot. The ballot is intended to resolve two issues. First, there is a contradiction in the Batch Location state model between the state definitions and the transition table. The standard currently defines the UNOCCUPIED state as having no substrates, yet the transition table only allows transition to the OCCUPIED state when all substrates in the batch are moved to the batch location. There is no dispute that this needs to be resolved, but three proposed solutions have emerged. The other issue is that no collection events are reported when moving substrates to the batch location until all substrates in the batch are at the batch location. For batch equipment, this means no substrate tracking is occurring during that window.
- Introduce new loading/unloading collection events to report when substrates are loaded and unloaded into/from the batch. This was proposed in the ballot.
- Require each substrate location in the batch to be modeled using the substrate location state model.
- Modify the batch location state model transitions and redefine the OCCUPIED and UNOCCUPIED states definitions to report a collection event any time one or more substrates are moved to a batch location.
Each proposal has pros and cons to weigh. The task force will be meeting to discuss this further and select a technical direction before the ballot is resubmitted.
Additionally, there are two new ballot initiatives. A minor one will modify the well-known names in E116 to ensure all data variables and status variables have unique names. A major new ballot will propose a new secure HSMS protocol, E37.3, to standardize the use of TLS (Transport Layer Security) in SECS message communication. This will put GEM technology, with minimal changes, into compliance with Cybersecurity best practices. Brian presented a poster on this at the Cybersecurity event at SEMICON West.
DDA (Diagnostics Data Acquisition) Task Force
The DDA task force is still working to develop the Freeze 3 version of the EDA standards using gRPC technology. We had two ballots related to Freeze 3 in the last voting cycle. The E164 ballot 7178 failed. Because Freeze 3 will include the E164 standard in this version, it will need to pass before we can declare a freeze 3 version. The ballot 7178 will was also abolished and replace with a new SNARF broader in scope. The next ballot will include:
- Primary E164 standard: requirements and guidelines for building EDA models
- New subordinate standards to E164, one each for E30, E40, and E87 GEM 300 standards, indicating exactly how to model each standard in EDA.
Additionally, in its third attempt, ballot 7321B passed with changes to the E125 filtering capabilities and general changes/fixes to all the EDA standards. This ballot includes changes from the EDA test session conducted to validate EDA between multiple independent software providers.
Additionally, there are two new ballot initiatives. One to update all EDA standards in a final iteration. This ballot plans to include at a minimum:
- SEMI E125 – Metadata definitions supporting multiple SECS identifiers. The proposal is to move the SECS IDs into the instances (parameters, simple events and exceptions) so that when you have multiple parameters, they can share a single definition where the instance has the unique SECS ID. The use case we discussed is when you have multiple identical temperature sensors; the parameters can share one definition.
- SEMI E132 – Propose new Security Certificate Changed notification message.
- SEMI E134 – Cached Data Report – Provide more clarity when one client activates a DCP already activated by another client
The other new initiative is to update SEMI standard E178 where EDA freeze 1 and freeze 2 are defined. Opening this activity is a message to all that EDA freeze 3 version is close. Close means that in a best-case scenario it might be published mid-2026.
ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration) Task Force
In the ABFI task force a ballot failed which plans to define well-known names for the E142 substrate mapping standards. The ballot should pass in the next round of voting when the mistakes/omissions in the original ballot are fixed. Additionally, the ballot plans to provide clarification for the collection event in subordinate standard E142.4 which reports when a substrate map is ready.
CDS (Fab & Equipment Computer & Device Security) Task Force
The task force discussed the future of cybersecurity standards E187, E188, and E191. Standards E187 and E188 both define requirements for equipment suppliers to ensure malware-free equipment and cybersecurity best practices. These standards were published about 4 years ago, meaning the content is nearly five years old and are both out of date. With NIST dropping plans for SCAP 2.0, the expectation is that E188 will not be updated to adopt modern practices and instead will simply remain as a guide and resource for implementing requirements in SEMI E187. Going forward, the focus will be on SEMI E187 compliance which allows for more flexibility in implementing best cybersecurity practices. Meanwhil,e there are activities in Taiwan (where this standard originated) to update SEMI E187.
Additionally, there is a new activity in North America to update SEMI E191. Currently the scope of SEMI E191 remains narrow by reporting basic information about the factory facing computer(s) including the operating system’s name, manufacturer, version and build number. The standard will be updated to provide much more information relevant to cybersecurity assessment. The exact details remain intentionally fluid as the new version of the ballot develops.
On a related note, an initiative to make SEMI E191 information available through a gRPC interface. Currently the information is only available through an equipment’s GEM interface.
Next Steps
The North America Information & Control Committee will use SEMI voting Cycle 1 for the next round of ballots. Ballots are due to SEMI by Tuesday, December 16, 2025. These ballots will be adjudicated at the North America Winter SEMI standards meetings slated for February 23-26, 2026. These meetings will either be held at SEMI headquarters in Milpitas, CA or completely virtual.