Was ist SECS / GEM?

The SECS standard (S Communication Standards for EMI Devices) and the GEM standard (Generic Model for Communication and Control of Manufacturing Equipment) are published and maintained by SEMI.org. SEMI is an international organization of semiconductor manufacturers that governs standards for semiconductor manufacturing.

It is the primary communication protocol used in automation for the (initially) semiconductor/electronics industry. Today, however, it is also widely used in the photovoltaic and SMT industries.

It provides a communication interface between devices and host systems.

Unlike other communication protocols such as PLCs, devices from different vendors can communicate with different types of host systems using a standard and consistent protocol.

To understand the SECS/GEM standards, you need to acquire the following 3 basic standards from SEMI:

SEMI E30 GEM Standard – This is the “brain” that defines the behavior of devices (business rules), state machines, and certain rules, such as which SECS-II messages should be used in which situations and what actions should result from them. It also defines functions such as status data acquisition, trace data acquisition, alarm management, spooling, remote command, etc.

SEMI E5 SECS-II – Defines the details of the interpretation of messages (APIs) exchanged between devices of a host. It also defines the data structure of message inputs/outputs, the data element format, acknowledgment codes, etc.

SEMI E37 HSMS – High-Speed ​​SECS Messaging Services. This is a transport layer based on the TCP/IP protocol and is the successor to the previous SEMI E4 SECS-I standard, which was based on serial communication. This is also the layer at which SECS-II messages are encoded in the HSMS message format.