As a leader in model-based control solutions for the semiconductor equipment industry, SC Solutions attended SEMI’s “AI Techniques in Semiconductor Manufacturing” workshop, held August 5-6, 2026, at SEMI headquarters in Milpitas, CA. Hosted by the SEMI Smart Manufacturing Initiative, the two-day event brought together engineers and technologists from across the semiconductor ecosystem — equipment suppliers, EDA vendors, software providers, and end users — to examine the real-world deployment of AI across the fab, spanning machine-learning-driven process optimization, equipment health monitoring, predictive maintenance, and causal root-cause analysis.
For the SC team, the workshop offered some valuable insights into how data-driven AI/ML techniques can be used in parallel with the physics-based modeling methods underlying SC’s own control and modeling work. Sessions on Bayesian optimization for process development and real-time equipment health monitoring were also of interest to SC because of ongoing R&D work in those areas. The Workshop reinforced the value of combining first-principles models with modern AI methods in next-generation digital twins for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.