Interface A standards could be the window to better chip-making processes
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 7/1/2005 6:00:00 AM
Web services technology could make it easier for semiconductor manufacturers to monitor and improve their production processes. Some industry experts even believe an emerging communication standard based on Web services could shorten the time it takes to bring $2 billion-plus chip-making fabs online.
The standard, known as Interface A, was developed by a subsidiary of SEMATECH, an industry consortium of some of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers.
"We expect the adoption of Interface A to ramp up in the second half of [2005]," says Harvey Wohlwend, project manager for e-manufacturing at ISMI (International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative), the SEMATECH subsidiary that developed the standard. "It's likely that selected, critical processes within factories will be targeted first, with the standard spreading through entire factories over time."
Interface A is a set of four standards (see graphic) evolved from an ISMI effort to allow equipment suppliers to diagnose and troubleshoot problems with their equipment from remote locations. That required retrieving data from the equipment, and initially ISMI wanted that data to pass through the same communications port used for relaying work instructions to the tools from process control programs. But ultimately, Wohlwend says, "We looked at the idea of a second data port to separate control functions from monitoring functions."
Early work involved using an existing standard known as SECS (semiconductor industry communications standard) to pass data from the machines to diagnostic programs. Around that time, however, Web services standards began to emerge, and ISMI viewed Web services as an easier means of passing data.
The move to Web services standards figures to accelerate the adoption of Interface A, as software suppliers such as Microsoft and some of its independent software vendor partners have rallied to create solutions that conform to the standard.
"It's expensive to use data for performance improvement when it requires special programming to pull it out of systems," says John McCallum, Microsoft's high-tech industry manager. "Web services make it easier and less costly to retrieve data." McCallum says Microsoft isn't developing Interface A solutions, but instead is giving its partners "architectural guidance for building Interface A solutions on the Microsoft .NET framework."
Wonderware and Cimetrix are among the Microsoft partners accepting that guidance. Cimetrix has a product called CIMPortal that pulls information from chip-making equipment, in Interface A format, and passes it to Wonderware's ArchestrA platform, an environment for developing process-control applications.
Wohlwend says basing Interface A on Web services will make it easier to link any two data collection and process control solutions. In addition to aiding process improvement, Wohlwend says, these connections should make it easier to integrate various pieces of tool-making equipment installed in new semiconductor fabs, thus shortening the time it takes to bring them online. He also concludes, "Leveraging mainstream technology like Web services will make it easier for a semiconductor manufacturer to recruit, train, and retain engineers."
