SEMI standards
The SEMI Standards program was established in 1973 using proceeds from the west coast SEMICON show. Its first initiative, following meetings with silicon suppliers, was a successful effort to set common wafer diameters to be used in silicon manufacturing. This standardization helped the industry avoid a wafer shortage from 1973 to 1974, that had previously been anticipated. The standards would become internationally utilized over the years, through partnerships with the ASTM, the DIN, and other national standards organizations. [12] Before these standards, there were more than two thousand different specifications for silicon and by 1975 80% of all silicon wafers met with the SEMI standard. [13] It was first published annually as the Book of SEMI Standards. [14] With three new standards published annually in the mid-2000s, the book was eventually replaced with a CD-ROM, [15] and now standards are available online on an annual subscription basis. [16]
Today, more than 1,000 SEMI standards and safety guidelines are available to address all aspects of automated fabs. The standards are developed and maintained by over 5,000 volunteer experts representing more than 2,000 companies, working in 23 technical committees and 200 task forces. [17] High-profile standards include wafer dimensions and materials, factory efficiency and reliability, equipment interfaces, and environmental, health and safety standards. [17] In 2022, SEMI published first ever a pair of Cybersecurity Standards, to help protect against future cyberattacks on factory equipment. SEMI E187 - Specification for Cybersecurity of Fab Equipment, and SEMI E188 - Specification for Malware Free Equipment Integration. [18]
The four main equipment communication standards are the SECS-I (which stands for SEMI Equipment Communication Standards) established in 1978 that deals with communication protocol and physical definitions, the SECS-II established in 1982 that deals with message format, the GEM established in 1992 that refines the SECS-II, and the HSMS that supersedes SECS-I established in 1994. [19] The organization also provides safety and ergonomics guidelines, the first of which was the SEMI S2 developed in 1993, followed by the SEMI S8 in 1995. [20]
Conferences and trade shows
SEMI was founded in 1970 as an association of semiconductor production equipment vendors. [19] At that time, most companies in the semiconductor industry exhibited at the Wescon Show on the west coast and the IEEE show on the east coast. Wishing to organize a show dedicated to semiconductor production equipment, 55 companies met in Palo Alto and agreed to found a new association, originally called Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Institute. [21]
The first SEMICON show was held in 1971 at the San Mateo Fairground in California, which featured “semiconductor processing equipment, materials, and service firms.” [19] It featured 80 exhibitors and attracted 2,800 visitors. [22] In 1973, the first SEMICON East show was held in New York City, with 120 exhibitors participating. This was followed by SEMICON Europa in Zürich, Switzerland (1975) and SEMICON Japan in Tokyo (1977), which attracted more than 200 exhibitors and 4,500 visitors. [22] Through this and other activities, the organization grew from a domestic organization to one with an international focus. [20] Part of this focus was to work with governments to reduce trade barriers and develop “a sympathetic regulatory climate” [23] for its member organizations—companies that sold equipment and materials to firms that produce microprocessors. [24]
Today SEMI organizes and produces nearly 100 technology showcases, trade shows, conferences and special events per year in all of the major manufacturing regions of the world. They include trade shows in China, Japan, Germany, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, North America, and Europe, as well as executive conferences, technical programs, and standards meetings. [25] [26] [27] The organization also has technical education programs, and a weekly email newsletter. Presentations delivered at its symposia are available to members of the organization on the Members Only section of the website. [14]
Market research reports
SEMI provides market research reports for the semiconductor equipment, materials, and LED industries. [26] Its billing data is considered an important leading indicator of demand trends and is closely watched within the industry and by semiconductor market analysts and investor. [28] It also releases the World Fab Forecast. [4]
The semiconductor equipment billings report provides a three-month rolling average of the book-to-bill ratio for semiconductor equipment manufacturers with headquarters in North America. It is released approximately three weeks after the close of each month. [29]
Data for the reports is collected directly from suppliers through a confidential data collection program via an independent financial services company. [30]
There are data collection programs in the following areas. [31] [32]
- Equipment market
- Packaging market
- Materials market
- Semiconductor Fabrication foundries and capacity
In-depth reports are broken down by region, supply chain segment, and equipment type.
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuits (ICs) such as microprocessors, microcontrollers, and memories. It is a multiple-step photolithographic and physico-chemical process during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer, typically made of pure single-crystal semiconducting material. Silicon is almost always used, but various compound semiconductors are used for specialized applications.
In electronics, a wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor, such as a crystalline silicon, used for the fabrication of integrated circuits and, in photovoltaics, to manufacture solar cells.
STMicroelectronics NV is a European multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the largest of such companies in Europe. It was founded in 1987 from the merger of two state-owned semiconductor corporations: Thomson Semiconducteurs of France and SGS Microelettronica of Italy. The company is incorporated in the Netherlands and headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland. Its shares are traded on Euronext Paris, the Borsa Italiana and the New York Stock Exchange.
Applied Materials, Inc. is an American corporation that supplies equipment, services and software for the manufacture of semiconductor chips for electronics, flat panel displays for computers, smartphones, televisions, and solar products. The company also supplies equipment to produce coatings for flexible electronics, packaging and other applications. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and is the second largest supplier of semiconductor equipment in the world based on revenue behind Dutch company ASML.
The semiconductor industry is the aggregate of companies engaged in the design and fabrication of semiconductors and semiconductor devices, such as transistors and integrated circuits. Its roots can be traced to the invention of the transistor by Shockley, Brattain, and Bardeen at Bell Labs in 1948. Bell Labs licensed the technology for $25,000, and soon many companies, including Motorola (1952), Schockley Semiconductor (1955), Sylvania, Centralab, Fairchild Semiconductor and Texas Instruments were making transistors. In 1958 Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild independently invented the Integrated Circuit, a method of producing multiple transistors on a single "chip" of Semiconductor material. This kicked off a number of rapid advances in fabrication technology leading to the exponential growth in semiconductor device production, known as Moore's law that has persisted over the past six or so decades. The industry's annual semiconductor sales revenue has since grown to over $481 billion, as of 2018.
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclusively, located in the United States, mainland China, and Taiwan. Fabless companies can benefit from lower capital costs while concentrating their research and development resources on the end market. Some fabless companies and pure play foundries may offer integrated-circuit design services to third parties.
SEMATECH was a not-for-profit consortium that performed research and development to advance chip manufacturing. SEMATECH involved collaboration between various sectors of the R&D community, including chipmakers, equipment and material suppliers, universities, research institutes, and government partners. SEMATECH's mission was to rejuvenate the U.S. semiconductor industry through collective R&D efforts, focused on improving manufacturing processes and introducing cutting-edge technologies.
KLA Corporation is an American company based in Milpitas, California that makes wafer fab equipment. It supplies process control and yield management systems for the semiconductor industry and other related nanoelectronics industries. The company's products and services are intended for all phases of wafer, reticle, integrated circuit (IC) and packaging production, from research and development to final volume manufacturing.
In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant, also called a fab or a foundry, is a factory where integrated circuits (ICs) are manufactured.
Soitec is an international company based in France, that manufactures substrates used in the creation of semiconductors.
Lam Research Corporation is an American supplier of wafer-fabrication equipment and related services to the semiconductor industry. Its products are used primarily in front-end wafer processing, which involves the steps that create the active components of semiconductor devices and their wiring (interconnects). The company also builds equipment for back-end wafer-level packaging (WLP) and for related manufacturing markets such as for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).
GlobalFoundries Inc. is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, the company was privately owned by Mubadala Investment Company, a sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, until an initial public offering (IPO) in October 2021.
SECS/GEM is the semiconductor industry's equipment interface protocol for equipment-to-host data communications. It is the messaging standard that facilitates communication between process equipment made by disparate manufacturers and the factory host. In an automated fab, the interface can start and stop equipment processing, collect measurement data, change variables, and select recipes for products. The SECS /GEM standards do all this in a defined way.
SVTC Technologies was a technology services company that provided development and commercialization services for semiconductor process-based technologies and products. SVTC operated from 2004 to October 2012.
In the early twenty-first century; foreign investment, government regulations and incentives promoted growth in the Indian electronics industry. The semiconductor industry, which is its most important and resource-intensive sector, profited from the rapid growth in domestic demand. Many industries, including telecommunications, information technology, automotive, engineering, medical electronics, electricity and solar photovoltaic, defense and aerospace, consumer electronics, and appliances, required semiconductors. However, as of 2015, progress was threatened by the talent gap in the Indian sector, since 65 to 70 percent of the market was dependent on imports.
The Chinese semiconductor industry, including integrated circuit design and manufacturing, forms a major part of mainland China's information technology industry.
The CHIPS and Science Act is a U.S. federal statute enacted by the 117th United States Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on August 9, 2022. The act authorizes roughly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States, for which it appropriates $52.7 billion. The act includes $39 billion in subsidies for chip manufacturing on U.S. soil along with 25% investment tax credits for costs of manufacturing equipment, and $13 billion for semiconductor research and workforce training, with the dual aim of strengthening American supply chain resilience and countering China. It also invests $174 billion in the overall ecosystem of public sector research in science and technology, advancing human spaceflight, quantum computing, materials science, biotechnology, experimental physics, research security, social and ethical considerations, workforce development and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at NASA, NSF, DOE, EDA, and NIST.
United States–India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, or iCET, is a collaborative framework established by the United States and India to enhance cooperation in developing fields of technology. These areas encompass artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors, and wireless telecommunication.
EV Group (EVG), formerly EV Vision Group, is an Austrian semiconductor equipment manufacturer founded in 1980 and headquartered in Sankt Florian am Inn, Austria. Specializing in photolithography, wafer bonding, nanoimprint lithography, and inspection systems, EVG provides advanced semiconductor and MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) fabrication solutions. Its innovative technologies are crucial in producing high-performance semiconductor devices, including high-brightness LEDs. With a global presence, EVG is recognized for contributing to the semiconductor industry and delivering cutting-edge equipment to fabs worldwide.
