Software Architecture and Subclassing Technique for Semiconductor Manufacturing Machines

In this paper, we proposed a software architecture for operating an automatic semiconductor manufacturing machine. Nowadays, machines used for semiconductor processing require a high level of automation in the areas of motion control, machine vision, data acquisition and networking. These functions are assured by industrial equipment that is generally installed in a computer. This equipment occupies a large part of the system resources and generates a large computational burden, so the software should be designed for efficiency. The proposed architecture consists of four layers and virtual equipments(VEs). The VEs are made by subclassing the physical equipments(PEs), and the layers are coded into a thread which updates the status of the VEs. Subroutines in the program p to the pointers to the VEs, and direct access to the physical equipment is prohibited. The number of accesses(NOAs) to the PEs in a typical industrial application was simulated for an unlimited access structure and the proposed structure. The result showed that the proposed structure was more efficient than the typical one irrespective of the subroutines. This architecture was also applied to design machine operating software for performing automatic wafer dicing.