Tell me more: What are Well-Known Names (WKN)?
Modern semiconductor tools can produce massive volumes of data. One of the biggest challenges of integrating equipment into factory systems is determining which specific parts of this data the factory uses to enable SEMI Standard-compliant communication and control.
The GEM-based SEMI Standards, such as SEMI E30 and 300mm Standards, define expected behavior and information that are reported to the factory host system. Yet, when defining the required host items (variables, collection events, or alarms), the equipment implementation can use any name in the SECS-II interface and still be compliant with the respective standard.
For example, a piece of equipment may implement the required “ControlState” status variable with the name “CtrlState”, “ControlState”, “CONTROLSTATE”, “Control State”, “controlstate”, or “Variable22”. As a result, factory host software using the GEM interface has to create a lookup table to map expected variables, collection events, and alarms to each specific equipment implementation. This is often a manual process for each implementation variation and can require several back-and-forth sessions between the equipment supplier and the factory host engineers.
As the first step to address this problem, the North America GEM300 Task Force has been adding the Well-Known Name (WKN) concept to its SECS-II Standards. Data variables, status variables, equipment constants, collection events, and alarms defined in the SEMI Standards are being updated to define the WKN aliases that implementations should use.
In order to benefit from this new feature, everyone needs to use the same WKN in their documentation for standardized variables, collection events, and alarms required by SEMI Standards. The SEMI Standards will be updated to state this requirement explicitly.
- SEMI E172 (SECS Equipment Data Dictionary (SEDD)) will be updated to require that the equipment supplier use the WKN defined in the corresponding SEMI Standard when the variables, collection events, or alarms defined in the SEMI Standards are reported in the equipment’s SEDD GEM interface documentation file.
- Equipment supporting EDA/Interface A will use WKN as part of the equipment’s EDA metadata if they support the upcoming EDA Freeze 3 definition (Part of the revisions to SEMI E164 (Common EDA Metadata)).
By using the WKN aliases, factory systems easily know which items they should use to access information for that specific equipment instance. This helps factories integrate equipment faster and access the correct information for control and analysis capabilities.
Check out Semiconductor Engineering’s article on High-Quality Data Needed To Better Utilize Fab Data Streams on how WKNs are helping solve this problem.
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