1. Purpose of the gate
End of support is the last gate in the equipment lifecycle. It confirms that the maker has kept the commitments made in the End of support notice and can stop supporting the platform without leaving customers, suppliers or regulators with loose ends. After this gate, the platform's design team, service organisation and spares stock are no longer maintained for it, and only its records remain.
Closing support well means more than reaching a date. Every last-time-buy order must be filled or formally cancelled. Every service agreement must be ended, fulfilled or transferred to a provider the customer accepted. Remote service links must be shut down and accounts and credentials revoked, following the security practice drawn from SEMI E187, so that no path into a customer's fab remains open. Spares stock that will not be sold must be disposed of lawfully, with WEEE and similar rules applied where they cover the maker.
The records outlive the platform. Customers may still run tools for years under third-party support, regulators may ask about a tool's conformity, and export authorities may audit past shipments. The product archive must therefore hold the design, software, service and compliance records, including the conformity file, declarations of conformity, safety evaluations and materials declarations, and the export compliance records must be retained for as long as the rules require. The archive must stay readable, which may mean keeping file formats and software tools that open them.
The gate criteria are a support closure record in which every open commitment is closed or transferred; a product archive in which design, software, service and compliance records are archived; and export compliance records retained as the rules require. No key decision is frozen at this gate; the end of support policy and timing, frozen at the End of support notice, is the commitment this gate checks.
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