It’s no secret that the semiconductor industry is hungry for data — and relies on efficient methods to capture and analyze it. Since 2005, Equipment Data Acquisition Standards (known as EDA Standards) have helped pave the way for both equipment users and suppliers to succeed in Smart Manufacturing practices.  

Understanding EDA Standards  

Today, brand new SEMI standards are in the works in the form of EDA Freeze 3, which will enhance the ability of the semiconductor industry to efficiently collect and share high data loads from across the production line.  

Historically, EDA standards have been introduced in a collection, or “freeze,” in order to streamline unified adoption and implementation and better enable high-speed data transfer via web services. The purpose of these standards has been to provide a common framework to “define equipment metadata, administer access rights, and manage data collection plans for any high-technology industry requiring high frequency and volume information through a dedicated channel separate from control messages,” according to SEMI.  

What’s New in EDA Freeze 3 

At the heart of the EDA Freeze 3 standards is the integration of key technical protocols and functions that unlock new potential for data sharing and collection. These include the integration of: 

• HTTP/2 
• gRPC  
• Protocol Buffers 

The above technologies leverage a binary encoded protocol that improves both data transmission performance and data security. This shift represents a significant and beneficial transition away from the current EDA Freeze 2 HTTP SOAP/XML framework. 

Furthermore, the introduction of gRPC — a modern open source high performance Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework that can run in any environment — is intended to facilitate smooth widespread adoption across platform types and programming languages. 

Image source: SEMI  

According to an article co-authored by Inna Skvortsova of SEMI and Albert Fuchigami of PEER Group, the benefit of these updates and how they enhance EDA Freeze 2 characteristics can be summarized as follows: 

“Integrating gRPC and Protocol Buffers will boost EDA capabilities to meet modern throughput requirements by using best practice techniques developed and tested by other big data users. EDA Freeze 3 provides a unified target across the various standards so that equipment makers, software providers, and factories can all work towards a common data collection infrastructure.” 

One common use case leveraging gRPC is pictured below. 

Use Case 1 – Client and Consumer are Together. Image source: SEMI 

EDA Freeze 3 updates are currently under development. To position your operation for success, your best course of action is to prepare for adoption ahead of the curve.  

Implications for the Semiconductor Industry 

The rollout of EDA Freeze 3 is one major example of a growing trend: the urgent need to identify new frameworks and techniques that help fabs manage and use equipment data in order to optimize yield.  

As chip technology advances, so does the type and amount of data you need to operate a successful production line. The problem is clear — the more that fabs want to capitalize on the potential of optimized data and AI/ML solutions, the more data they will need to efficiently ingest and analyze.  

As AI business cases continue to reshape the technology sector at large, the advancement of chip technology seems poised to not only continue, but accelerate. As we discussed in a recent article, the need for streamlined, secure, and collaborative data collection is becoming more essential by the day.  

With security top of mind, EDA Freeze 3 will offer enhanced security and authentication capabilities in the form of easier SSL/TLS certificate integration, hashing sensitive identifiers such as the SessionID and ClientID, and allowing an Access Control List (ACL) password to be set when establishing a session. EDA Freeze 3 will also support only opening the port on the Equipment Server and sharing the existing connection. 

Next Steps in EDA Standard Development 

No matter what shape the final EDA Freeze 3 standards take, Fabscape will be a valuable software platform that can be applied in a scalable fashion depending on the needs of your fab. The power of Fabscape lies in its innate flexibility, allowing you to not just keep pace with emerging standards, but to stay ahead of the curve.