Semiconductor Industry Goes EtherCAT

Summary

March 9, 2012 - Supported by the market-leading semiconductor equipment vendors, the EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) Semi Technical Working Group (TWG) is standardizing EtherCAT usage in manufacturing equipment for chips, displays and solar panels. The 2-day kick-off meeting was attended by 96 influential semiconductor industry experts. Representatives from Applied Materials, Aixtron, Lam Research and Brooks Automation explained at the meeting why they selected EtherCAT and what results they expect to achieve from the TWG. They also assured support for the 14 different task groups that were established, which now work on device profiles for semiconductor-industry specific devices such as mass flow controllers, RF generators and vacuum gauges. Furthermore, a task group defines common implementation requirements such as exception handling or labeling. Group members represent semiconductor companies from North America, Europe and Asia. The TWG chairman is Daniel R. Judd from Arlington Laboratory, a well-known semiconductor industry expert in communication technology and standards. Judd had already chaired the ODVA Semi SIG, which in the ‘90s had successfully introduced the previous de-facto standard for the industry. “The new fieldbus standard for the semiconductor industry is EtherCAT – the establishment of the ETG Semi Technical Working Group adds even more evidence to support this,” said Martin Rostan, ETG Executive Director. “We consider this a major achievement for EtherCAT, because in large segments of North America and Asia, the semiconductor industry has clear technology leadership and other industries follow accordingly.” The TWG and the task groups meet every 3 months face-to-face for two or three days in order to achieve results soon: the December 2011 training class was hosted by Bay Advanced Technologies, the February 2012 meeting by Applied Materials, and the May 2012 meeting will be hosted by Lam Research. Web meetings in between complete the schedule. The TWG intends to publish results by the middle of the year.