Background
SEMI North America Information & Control Committee winter meetings were online-only this year as a SEMI experiment to augment participation and convenience.
As usual, 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), DDA (Diagnostics Data Acquisition) and the new Digital Twin task force, all co-led by PDF Solutions. Also as usual, the third day was reserved for the committee meeting where final decisions are 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 when 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
The task force developed a SNARF to develop a new digital twin standard and plans to distribute this for feedback and approval. This first specification will focus on establishing clear digital twin related definitions. The ambitious goal is to submit the ballot in July for approval at SEMICON West. Eventually, this task force plans to develop one or more interfaces for interacting with digital twins but this work is still undefined and sometime in the future.
GEM 300 Task Force
In the GEM 300 task force (and later in the committee) 2 ballots passed related to fixing well-known variable issues related to E116 (Equipment Performance Tracking) and E90 (Substrate Tracking). Ballot 7425 modified some E116 status variable well-known names to remove conflicts with data variables. Ballot 7345A line item #2 modifies two collection event well-known names for consistency with other well-known naming. Because the GEM 300 standards allow standard variables, collection events and alarms to have any name and any identification number, well-known names provide a standard mapping from implementations to the standards. Well-known names should be reported in the SEDD files and will be used by the EDA (Equipment Data Acquisition) standards. Note that line-item in a ballot is voted independent of the other line items in the ballot.
Line item #1 in ballot 7345A E90 Specification for Substrate Tracking ballot failed due to controversy surrounding the lifetime of a batch. A batch is when a group of substrates are processed at the same time. There are various methods for moving the substrates together for processing that have resulted in disagreement on when the batch should be created and deleted. The ballot is intended to resolve two issues. First, there is a blatant 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. The ballot failed because some feel like the batch object should not exist until the batch is complete (all substrates are present), some feel like the batch object can exist even before any substrates are present, and some feel like at least on substrate should be present. None of the opinions are technically wrong or unfounded but only one technical solution can exist. Hopefully, the task force can find consensus.
The most impactful ballot in development is 7428, which proposes to standardize secure HSMS communication. This is a long-overdue specification. This first version of the ballot was a bit roughly assembled and intended to draw out controversy related to the technical approach. The ballot proposes three stages to establish communication:
1. TCP/IP
2. TLS (Transport Layer Security) and
3. HSMS-SS.
Although the ballot failed for valid technical reasons (missing certificate validation details), there is strong consensus among all voters that generally this is the correct technical approach (inserting TLS), and we have only to work out the final details. Not one voter objected to the fundamental approach. Since there are various technical approaches that are possible, getting this consensus is a strong win.
DDA (Diagnostics Data Acquisition) Task Force
The DDA task force is still developing the Freeze 3 version of the EDA standards using gRPC. We had two ballots related to Freeze 3 in this last voting cycle.
The E164 ballot 7422 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. It will be reworked by the task force and re-balloted.
Ballot 7419 had three line-items. The first one proposed a new mapping of IDs to GEM interfaces. This ballot failed and will be discontinued. The proposed solution added more bloat to the EDA equipment model instead of reducing bloat as was the objective. The second line item added a new SecurityCertificateChanged notification to enhance cybersecurity. This ballot passed. The third line item included a variety of changes proposed by task force members. This ballot failed and will be reworked. It will also include some additional changes proposed within the scope of the ballot.
While we are closer to completing EDA freeze 3, in a best-case scenario it might be published late-2026.
ABFI (Advanced Backend Factory Integration) Task Force
A few ballots are in development in the ABFI task force, but none were submitted for voting; therefore there was no ballot adjudication. Going forward, expect some ballots related to SEMI E142 substrate mapping to support more traceability use cases.
CDS (Fab & Equipment Computer & Device Security) Task Force
No ballot were adjudicated for the CDS task force. With decreased support for the SEMI E188 equipment cybersecurity standard, the task force began discussions about how to handle this specification going forward. All options remain on the table.
Ballot 7426 is in development to enhance SEMI standard E191, the specification for computing device cybersecurity status reporting. Here is a breakdown of the data required to be reported through a GEM interface related to cybersecurity.
- E191-1024 (current published version): ComputingDeviceIndentifier, OSManufacturer, OSName, OSVersion, OSBuild
- Ballot 7311A additions: OSInstalledUpdated, OSInstalledComponents
- GEM (SEM E30): MDLN, SOFTREV, EqSerialNum, E30EquipmentSupplier, EqpName
Ballot 7426 won’t be submitted until ballot 7311A has been published. The complete scope of additions is still undecided but will include more equipment computer interface to enable factories to assess cybersecurity risks.
Next Steps
The North America Information & Control Committee will use SEMI voting Cycle 4 for the next round of ballots. Ballots are due to SEMI by Monday, March 16, 2026. The voting window will be from March 25 to April 24, 2026. These ballots will be adjudicated at the North America Summer SEMI standards meetings, May 11-14, 2026, at the Hilton in Albany, NY, in conjunction with ASMC (Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference).