A real time data acquisition and monitor system for integrated circuit visual inspection

The design and implementation of a system used for real-time acquisition and monitoring of data collected at an IC manufacturing process are described. How it is used for process improvement and control is discussed. The approach taken to solve this problem can be divided into three functional areas: acquisition, monitor, and integration. The data acquisition task utilizes a touch screen terminal which is used by each inspector to enter his inspection results. Icons represent each defect category and, when a unit is rejected, the inspector touches the icon and a counter is incremented. The data monitor is an expert system which accesses these data and displays them dynamically in a status board fashion, including statistics on each lot. It checks if any inspector has rejected or accepted too many die or if any defect rate for a reject category is too high. The data integration includes an INGRES-based relational database and many report generator programs. At the end of the lot inspection, all data and warning messages related to the lot are stored in the database for later analysis