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SECS/GEM was the beginning, enabling IC makers to communicate and control wafer fabrication equipment. The introduction of 300mm wafers, with the attending demand for solutions that enabled far greater automation, created a whole new set of challenges. The GEM 300 standards were developed by SEMI to solve these challenges.

Cimetrix supports this industry initiative by developing and marketing software, services, and support for SECS/GEM, GEM 300, EDA (Interface A), and PV2 (PVECI) standards.

For more information, download the Cimetrix GEM 300 Introduction White Paper

Prior to the development of 300mm wafers, IC manufacturers required equipment suppliers to support only the SEMI standards - E5, E30, and either E37 or E4 - with basic features for controlling and monitoring the equipment. With the move to larger and heavier 300mm wafer sizes and plans to maximize production throughput through automation, semiconductor factories required automated material delivery to and from each unit of equipment, along with remote equipment configuration and control. Today, IC makers require production equipment to comply with GEM 300, including at least the following standards:

• E30 - Generic Model for Communications and Control of Manufacturing Equipment

• E39 - Object Services: Concepts, Behavior, and Services

• E40 - Processing Management

• E87 - Specification for Carrier Management (CMS)

• E90 - Specification for Substrate Tracking

• E94 - Specification for Control Job Management

These allow the factory to control and monitor the equipment in a consistent way to implement automation. Additional standards may also be required, such as:

• E116 - Specification for Equipment Performance Tracking (EPT)

• E148 - Specification for Time Synchronization and Definition of the TS-Clock Object

• E157 - Specification for Module Process Tracking (MPT)

In order to develop industry-wide standards all equipment suppliers and IC makers could agree to and use, GEM 300 was developed by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) organization.

Transport Protocol Standards - E37

The Transport Protocol Standards define how messages are transferred between the host and equipment. They do not define the data contained within a message. The meaning of messages must be determined through some message standard such as SEMI E5 (SECS-II).

SEMI E37 High-Speed SECS Message Services (HSMS) defines a TCP/IP based Ethernet connection. HSMS-SS is the single session implementation for point-to-point communication between one host and one equipment. It is intended as an alternative to SEMI E4 (SECS-1).  This is the transport protocol required in all 300mm fabs.

Message Format Standard - E5

SEMI E5 add a layer of organization on top of the transport protocols by defining messages used in the equipment-to-host bi-directional conversation.

Specific Functionality Standards

GEM 300 Compliance

Many factories require a machine to pass compliance testing as part of the basic machine acceptance. The degree of compliance is included and explained in the equipment's GEM & 300mm Interface Manual. Every SEMI compliant unit of equipment must include an interface manual.

In order to comply with these specifications for 300mm wafer manufacturing, you must provide the following:

1. Hardware and software to implement HSMS-SS as the Transport Protocol
2. Software to implement SECS-II
3. Software to implement each of the required Specific Functional Standards including
   • the SECS-II message parsing and formatting
   • state machine management
   • standard interdependencies
4. Software to integrate these SEMI standards into the machine

Cimetrix GEM 300 Software Solution

Cimetrix offers a GEM 300 software development kit called CIM300. Our SEMI product documentation, training, working examples including a complete sample application (usable as a starting point), and world-class support make our products easy for engineers to use.

For more information about Cimetrix products and services, SEMI, or how you can get involved in the standards, please contact our sales team.