October 30, 2001 – Austin, TX – domainLogix Corporation, Advanced Micro Devices, ILS Technology, and Oceana Sensor Technologies will develop a set of security reference models to be used as a basis for research within the semiconductor manufacturing and tool supplier industries.

The joint venture led by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) received $5 million from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) through the Advanced Technology Program to develop, prototype and validate a security framework for electronic collaboration via the Internet as a means of enhancing semiconductor manufacturing productivity.

This is the second NIST award for domainLogix, which was awarded $1.6 million in R&D funding last year to develop an object-based software architecture that allows semiconductor equipment to integrate intelligently with existing or advanced factory automation systems. As a result of this initial NIST funding, domainLogix’s OBEM XP commercial implementation of the SEMI Object Based Equipment Model standard (OBEM, E-98) has already reached phase 3 and is currently in beta testing.

With a $10.1 million budget, the joint venture plans to create within three years a security framework for electronic collaboration that will allow semiconductor manufacturers and equipment suppliers to share information while protecting proprietary information on both sides. domainLogix is charged with developing a security approach based not only on data transmission paths and repositories, but also securing data elements. This approach is pivotal, the company said, to the development of a “flexible firewall,” a security firewall to enable access to elemental data in an otherwise conventionally secured or unsecured data repository or transmission stream.

At the foundation of this initiative is the security reference model that will be created to allow semiconductor manufacturers and suppliers to define a detailed formal security policy that describes precisely under what conditions partner firms can access data. The model will reflect the way the customer really makes decisions about granting or denying access rather than the traditional procedural approach to security.

This new approach to security models will be implemented using the concept known as the flexible firewall. The flexible firewall is based upon a novel distributed architecture that can protect any accessible device (from a factory server down to an embedded sensor) and that enforces the security policies of the fab and equipment suppliers. domainLogix will lead the joint venture to define security requirements to be met by the flexible firewall, establish the overall security reference model that will become an open industry standard, as well as utilize the object-based modeling concepts implemented as part of its OBEM XP product line.