PFSC release history
Products & services / Factory products & services / PFSC / PFSC release history
Previous releases
Release information
Version: 2.0 | Release Date: March 20, 2025 | Customer support portal
Version 2.0 of PFSC offers a much broader range of deployment options for your station controller software with support for both Linux and Windows operating systems. PFSC can now run as a containerized application – suitable for either test automation in your development environment or as part of a high availability fab production environment. Support for both Docker based and Kubernetes based container engines is available. PFSC’s station controller design tool, Composer, now features a new component-based model generator which initializes faster and reduces development cycle time, especially for large configurations. A new chart screen lets users create their own charts at runtime, in addition to predefined charts. Using the new runtime security administration feature, administrators can create, update, and delete user accounts and roles while the station controller is running. Updated technology support includes Red Hat and Ubuntu, Kubernetes and Docker, .NET 8, and Visual Studio 2022.
Technology support
PFSC added support for:
- .NET 8
PFSC discontinued support for:
- .NET 6
Release information
Version: 1.7 | Release Date: August 13, 2025 | Customer support portal
This release of PFSC includes support for many newer versions of the SEMI standards to improve manufacturing operations. For equipment that supports the latest version of E172-0225, PFSC can leverage the equipment characterization data available in its SEDD file to generate a complete equipment model with a two-step automated script, greatly simplifying station controller development.
Version compatibility
Please contact us if you are interested in upgrading to this version of PFSC and we can provide you with an assessment of the effort to upgrade your solution.
Technology support
PFSC discontinued support for:
- Windows 10 Enterprise and IoT Enterprise LTSC 2019 (1809)
- Windows Server 2019
- Visual Studio 2019
Release information
Version:
1.6
Release Date:
April 30, 2024
Customer Support:
Visit our customer support portal
What’s new in this release
The standards governing equipment integration into a semiconductor factory continue to evolve for an increasingly diverse variety of tool types that have unique control and data collection requirements. Encoding and conveying an accurate representation of a tool’s equipment interface within a factory station controller can be a significant effort. PFSC 1.6 highly simplifies this task. PFSC leverages the latest release of E172-1023 SEDD (SECS Equipment Data Dictionary) standard and automated scripts to get you from an OEM SEDD file to a fully compliant station controller model with minimal customization.
Technology support
PFSC added support for:
- Windows 11 Enterprise 23H2
- .NET 6.0.418 SDK (if developing PTO Web UI screens) or the .NET 6.0.26 Runtime + ASP.NET Core Runtime (if using the PTO Web UI)
Release information
Version:
1.5
Release Date:
October 13, 2022
Customer Support:
Visit our customer support portal
What’s new in this release
The semiconductor industry continues to adopt Smart Manufacturing techniques as the industry moves towards a commitment to greater data insights, efficiency, and quality.
This release of PFSC provides capabilities to accelerate your company’s Smart Manufacturing transformation. We have expanded the web UI infrastructure with many new visual widgets, new Composer editing capabilities to accelerate solution development, and control token support that enables secure, multi-user interactions.
Release information
Version:
1.4
Release Date:
July 21, 2022
Customer Support:
Visit our customer support portal
What’s new in this release
Factories and equipment manufacturers must attain a certain level of minimum system readiness before they can capitalize on the latest technologies available for Smart Manufacturing. Innovative manufacturing companies are looking to capitalize on the latest technological advancements to build their manufacturing environments in ways that give them new competitive advantages.
This release of PFSC provides capabilities to accelerate your company’s Smart Manufacturing transformation. Our new HMI visualization infrastructure for web-based user interfaces enables you to quickly create tool or scenario-specific screens without coding. It also means that user interfaces for specific tool integrations can be easily updated to match emerging manufacturing requirements.
Technology support
Our products continue to adopt new computing technologies, enabling our customers to take advantage of the latest versions of computing platforms. PFSC now supports:
- Windows® 10 IoT Enterprise 2019 LTSC
- Windows Server® 2022 LTSC 21H2 (64-bit)
- .NET 6
- Visual Studio 2022
PFSC no longer supports the following:
- Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Pro and Enterprise (64-bit)
- .NET 5.
Release information
Version:
1.3
Release Date:
December 17, 2021
Customer Support:
Visit our customer support portal
What’s new in this release
With the recent increase in demand for semiconductor products, the industry has accelerated efforts to advance automation in their factories. Back-end manufacturing facilities in particular are adopting 300mm SEMI Standards for more advanced automation capabilities, gain additional data insights, and streamline the integration of new equipment.
In this release of PFSC™, we have added support for the rapid implementation of 300mm standards-compliant automation of semiconductor equipment. Similar to GEM-based Station Controller solutions, PFSC is designed for fast integration with 300mm equipment, including accelerated model creation, an intuitive and robust interface to communicate with the equipment, and realistic tool simulation.
This release also includes our new web-based user interface infrastructure which gives you the flexibility to adopt new manufacturing capabilities such as remote collaboration as well as access from virtually any smart device.
Release information
Version:
1.2
Release Date:
November 19, 2020
Customer Support:
Visit our customer support portal
What’s new in this release
Data access is the most critical factor in successful Smart Manufacturing. Without data, you can’t perform upstream analytics for preventive maintenance, nor can you calculate OEE. However, not every tool has a well-established 300mm standards-compliant SECS/GEM interface, let alone any SECS/GEM interface. That’s where PFSC can help.
In this release of PFSC, we have augmented our SECS/GEM communication capabilities, adding a file data collection infrastructure that lets you normalize, collect, and store almost any process or results file data on the equipment—all without writing any code. If there’s additional data you’d like to harvest from the tool’s PLC, we’ve enhanced our most popular PLC drivers to collect more data faster and more efficiently. We’ve added support for arrays, complex types, methods, and events to our OPC UA PLC driver and provided a high-speed communication option for our ADS Twincat PLC driver. And, once you’ve stored data in PFSC’s database, you can visualize it with PFSC’s newly enhanced charting that helps you contextualize what you’re looking at through annotations (e.g., recipe step completed) and statistical calculations (e.g., min, max, average, standard deviation).
Release information
Version:
1.1
Release Date:
March 19, 2020
Customer Support:
Visit our customer support portal
What’s new in this release
This release provides building blocks to accelerate your station controller development and fully utilize PFSC capabilities. We’ve added a SECS/GEM station controller sample configuration for a deposition tool, complete with simulated factory systems (MES and RMS) and robust tool simulation. For each custom component in the sample configuration, we’ve included underlying source code and design artifacts along with a suite of documentation (Developer’s Guide, Getting Started Guide, API reference manual) to help you leverage this powerful automation platform for your station controller development. And, for those of you who learn visually, we’ve added to our library of PFSC instructional videos to help kick-start your station controller development.
Previous technology support changes
| Product version | Change | Technology | Change date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.0 | Support ended |
|
March 20, 2025 |
| 1.7 | Support ended |
|
August 13, 2025 |
| 1.4 | Support ended |
|
June 21, 2022 |