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As the jewel in the crown of manufacturing, the semiconductor industry has always been the core of the information technology industry and a benchmark for intelligent manufacturing. To promote the high-end, intelligent, and green transformation of manufacturing, the high-quality development of the semiconductor industry must take the lead.

On August 24, the "Focus on Chip Intelligent Manufacturing·Empower High-Quality Development" themed salon, jointly organized by the Shenzhen Semiconductor Industry Association and Getech East, was successfully held. Many intelligent manufacturing experts from SEMI, IBM, Huawei, Fisunte, TCL CSOT, and other industry leaders gathered to share and discuss semiconductor industry development trends, intelligent manufacturing solutions, and cutting-edge technology R&D.

Getech East CEO He Jun stated in his speech that from the development trajectory of China's entire advanced manufacturing industry, there is an opportunity to build core competitiveness in intelligent manufacturing. Especially in the current downturn of the semiconductor industry, digitalization and intelligent manufacturing are key means for semiconductor manufacturers to achieve counter-cyclical development and maintain competitive advantages.

Getech East originated from the semiconductor industry and has accumulated extensive semiconductor know-how and talent in TCL's manufacturing environment, which is our unique gene and advantage. On one hand, we can view problems from the perspective of the client and the factory, continuously expanding and enhancing our capabilities in semiconductor intelligent manufacturing solutions. On the other hand, we continuously cultivate and introduce semiconductor professionals, leveraging our experience and platform to work with customers and partners to promote the development of intelligent manufacturing in the semiconductor industry.

Given the complex international environment and the accelerating fragmentation of the global semiconductor industry layout, firmly developing semiconductors has become a critical national strategy. The lessons from sanctions on companies like ZTE and Huawei prove that restrictions and even fragmentation of China's semiconductor industry are inevitable trends. China must prepare for the long term, increase R&D support, and build its own technology and industrial ecosystem.

In the process of "breaking through" in the semiconductor industry, digital tools will provide Chinese semiconductor companies with more competitive advantages. In the design phase, artificial intelligence will transform the entire design process, with new analytical technologies further optimizing parameters, making decisions, or correcting errors. In the manufacturing phase, data generated at various stages can be shared, directly analyzed, and errors reported to reduce manual inspections and improve efficiency. In the packaging and testing phase, fully utilizing data can shorten testing time and accelerate product time-to-market.

Amid global uncertainties in the semiconductor industry, stable, independently controllable domestic CIM software is a valuable tool for manufacturing companies to ensure efficient and agile production. Getech East's comprehensive CIM solution for semiconductor smart factories focuses on all aspects, including design, production, improvement, and inspection. Leveraging emerging technologies like AI and data intelligence, it deeply mines production line data value, conducts full-chain data analysis, identifies decision-making and improvement conditions through analytical models, continuously reduces quality issues, improves yield, and reduces costs while increasing efficiency.

Getech East innovatively builds comprehensive intelligent manufacturing solutions for semiconductor manufacturers from a "production-analysis-prediction" perspective. These solutions include key manufacturing systems such as MES, EAP, SPC, APC, FDC, and innovative quality improvement products like QMS, YMS, MFA, ADC, and a big data analytics platform. These cover critical aspects of chip production, including production execution, operations, control, and quality control, enabling dynamic equipment management, precise logistics management, efficient planning coordination, transparent production execution, and accurate quality traceability.

Command, control, and data collection are the three foundational elements for achieving Industry 4.0 and building smart factories. EAP enables real-time monitoring of production line equipment and is an indispensable control system for factory automation. EAP facilitates data transmission with equipment via the SECS international standard protocol, serving as a bridge between MES and equipment.

SECS is an international communication protocol that semiconductor equipment must adhere to. EAP communicates with equipment via SECS, transmits data, sends commands to control equipment according to predefined processes, achieves remote control and status monitoring, and automates equipment operation. Fisunte, with over 20 years of expertise in factory automation integration, develops EAP software for equipment automation and is one of the leading EAP software companies in the global semiconductor industry, serving clients like TSMC, UMC, Powerchip, Winbond, CXMT, Hua Hong, and Silan Micro.

As a global leader, TSMC possesses two unique strengths: reducing production cycles and ensuring factory consistency, which contribute to its unparalleled delivery capabilities. Reflecting on TSMC's digital transformation journey, it essentially progressed from computerization to automation, from automation to digitalization, from digitalization to intelligence, and finally to AI integration. Currently, TSMC is the only company in the world that has achieved Industry 4.0, essentially realizing fully flexible and digital production.

As digital transformation provides new momentum for factories, industrial internet platforms become the "operating systems" of digital factories. Their key task is to app-ify OT software, using apps to manage the basic industrial elements of "man, machine, material, method, and environment." The industrial internet operating system, equipped with all apps and industrial software app-ification, will be the most robust intellectual property in the Industry 4.0 era.

The semiconductor industry currently faces two major challenges. First, processes are becoming increasingly advanced, with R&D complexity and costs rising to near limits. Under Moore's Law, the chip industry maintains high-intensity R&D investments long-term. Second, the numerous processes, complex workflows, high automation and intelligence requirements, and substantial investments. There is extensive message interaction between manufacturing equipment and host servers within wafer fabrication plants, as well as between systems within factories, with very high frequency, demanding high ICT technology. Huawei's ICT technology provides critical digital support for various segments of the semiconductor industry chain, offering end-to-end solutions from simulation, VDI, manufacturing, to production line quality inspection.

With digital construction, the management of group-style manufacturing enterprises increasingly requires integration of data across various domains, making data value realization urgent. However, existing data quality issues cannot meet business needs, with pain points such as data being unknown, untrustworthy, unusable, and unconnected. Data governance and data platform construction are long-term foundational tasks for enterprise data, serving data operations and ultimately realizing data value to drive business growth.

The data asset management platform jointly developed by TCL CSOT and Getech East has become TCL CSOT's data management portal. Business departments can understand the enterprise's global data assets through the data asset catalog, and quickly and efficiently obtain target data through a convenient data application entry, greatly alleviating the past difficulties of "finding data hard, using data hard." It effectively supports numerous business analyses and enterprise management decisions, truly realizing the transformation of business data value.

A chip undergoes multiple steps and processes such as thin film deposition, photoresist coating, lithography development, etching, measurement, cleaning, and ion implantation. In a 12-inch production line, the number of steps can even reach two thousand, placing extremely high demands on the system due to the massive data volume. As the core brain of a 12-inch wafer fab, MES needs to thoroughly connect various processing stages; any error in any link directly affects yield and efficiency.

For a 12-inch fab MES to贯通 the entire production process, it must not only focus on software development technology but also penetrate the actual semiconductor processing flow, understand real business needs (why), and design functions for different processing area scenarios. This requires a process of沉淀 experience from actual factory operations. This is often referred to as the integration of OT and IT.

In early 2022, TCL began布局 AI large models and jointly released with Baidu the TCL-Baidu·Wenxin large model for the electronics manufacturing industry, optimizing existing quality inspection algorithm models, improving model accuracy, and reducing data requirements. Getech East also released its industrial AI visual inspection product, Tianshu, four years ago, widely used in semiconductors, new energy, automotive/3C, and other industries, serving dozens of large high-end manufacturing customers. With深入 exploration of large model technology and leveraging TCL's over 40 years of industrial manufacturing experience and data accumulation, Getech East recently officially launched its independently innovated industrial intelligent large model engine base—OctopusGPT. It can learn and simulate various rules and processes in industrial production, achieving comprehensive optimization and intelligent control of industrial production processes.

For example, the智慧工厂一体化智控中心解决方案 (1+4+1) we launched for a leading semiconductor factory is based on production execution and company operations. By establishing 1 data platform, 4 centers (war room center, alarm center, dispatch center, analysis center), and 1 knowledge base, it creates a high-efficiency, high-reliability intelligent integrated control center. Utilizing OctopusGPT, it实现了 intelligent functions such as automatic report generation in the war room, alarm content analysis, intelligent dispatch management闭环, and a knowledge base based on industry large models, making factory operation management more intelligent and efficient, bringing continuous value and competitive advantages to enterprises.

During the roundtable discussion, Zhou Shengming, Zhang Shaogong, Zhang Jijie, as well as Shi Baoqiu, Director/Chief Engineer of Chippacking Technology Co., Ltd., Ji Zhenyu, Deputy General Manager of Shenzhen Basic Semiconductor Co., Ltd., and Cai Guangquan, BD Manager of Shenzhen Ziguang Tongchuang Electronics Co., Ltd., engaged in in-depth exchanges on "How the Semiconductor Industry Can Achieve High-Quality Development in Intelligent Manufacturing."

Experts unanimously agreed that data-based analysis and decision-making have always been the core of the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Effectively and quickly挖掘 and enhancing the value of data from massive datasets is the core of semiconductor intelligent manufacturing development. Sharp big data insights are a shortcut to ensuring competitiveness. It is essential to fully utilize artificial intelligence and big data computing technologies to integrate the entire factory data chain and improve the level of intelligent manufacturing.