Steady-State Throughput and Scheduling Analysis of Multi-Cluster Tools for Semiconductor Manufacturing: A Decomposition Approach

Cluster tools are widely used as semiconductor manufacturing equipment. While throughput analysis and scheduling of single-cluster tools have been well-studied, the corresponding research on multi-cluster tools is still at the early stage. This paper analyzes steady-state throughput and scheduling of multi-cluster tools. A decomposition method is utilized to reduce a multi-cluster tool problem to multiple single-cluster tool problems. Existing research on the throughput and scheduling results is then applied to each single-cluster tool. For an M-cluster tool, an O(M) throughput calculation and robot scheduling algorithm is presented. A chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) polisher is used as an example of the multi-cluster cluster tools to illustrate the proposed decomposition method and algorithms.