Industry News, Trends and Technology, and Standards Updates

The Interface A / EDA standards define powerful methods for collecting data from an equipment control application. The data collection can be as simple as querying values of a parameter or two, or as complex as gathering thousands of parameter values across multiple reports. EDA specifies the use of internet standard messaging protocols like HTTP, XML and SOAP messages for collecting this data.

It is possible to define so many data collection plans gathering so much data that the sheer amount of data causes network performance to degrade. To remedy this situation, the EDA standards provide ways of sending the data in “chunks,” which dramatically improves the performance of XML over HTTP.

Two methods for sending data in chunks are grouping and buffering.

Grouping

Grouping only applies to individual Trace Requests within a Data Collection Plan (DCP).  If I have a trace request with an interval of one second, a group size of 1 would generate a report every second and send it across the wire. If I change my group size to 10, a report would still be generated every second, but the report would not be sent across the wire until 10 reports have accumulated. Each report has its own timestamp and they are arranged in the order they occur. The following diagram shows a trace data collection report with a group size of 3.

Buffering

Buffering is different from grouping in that the buffer interval (in minutes) applies to an entire DCP rather than individual trace requests within that plan. For example, if I have a DCP with three trace requests and two event requests defined with a buffer interval of 1 (meaning one minute), the trace reports would still be generated at the specified trace interval. Event reports would be generated as the events are triggered. The reports are not sent to the EDA client until the buffer interval expires. At that point, all the data reports that were generated within that buffer interval time are packaged and sent to the EDA client.

Combining Grouping and Buffering

Grouping and buffering can be combined as well. Groups are still defined on a per trace basis. If a group size has not been met when the buffer interval expires, the group report will be in the next buffer report that is sent.

Summary

With the provision for transmitting data in blocks, using grouping for trace data reports and/or buffering for all data reports, EDA is well suited for collecting large amounts of data without having a negative effect on network performance.  

Generally, when I do a DIY (do-it-yourself) project around the house, I spend the majority of the time searching for my tools. The other day I was helping a friend with a project. He had a well-organized tool box and it seemed that the perfect tool was always at his fingertips. I was amazed at how fast the project went and how easy it was when the right tools were handy.

In April of 2016, we published a blog called OEM EDA Implementation Best Practices that outlined ten things to consider when designing an equipment-side EDA / Interface A solution to fit your needs. This blog post analyzes a few of those recommendations and looks at how using the Cimetrix EDA products CIMPortal Plus, ECCE Plus and EDATester (a well-stocked and organized tool box) makes it very easy to follow those recommendations.

The basic steps in creating a useful EDA implementation are:

1. Determine which data will be published
2. Build an equipment model
3. Deploy the model
4. Publish the data from the equipment control application
5. Set up a data collection application
6. Test the interface

The blog post mentioned above states, “Since the content of the equipment metadata model is effectively the data collection contract between the equipment supplier and the factory users, your customer’s ultimate satisfaction with the EDA interface depends on the content and structure of this model.” Before building your model, you need to determine what data the equipment will make available for collection. CIMPortal Plus has the concept of a Data Collection Interface Module (DCIM) that publishes this data to the EDA server. The engineer building the model will map the data from the DCIM into the equipment model.

Once the mapping of the data is complete, the engineer will need to put this data in a format understood by the server. CIMPortal Plus provides a utility called Equipment Model Developer (EMDeveloper – pictured below) that makes it easy to create the hierarchy of your equipment (SEMI E120) and embed the data from the DCIM into that model (SEMI E125). If you use the tools and best practices provided in EMDeveloper, your equipment model will conform to the SEMI E164 (EDA Common Metadata) standard as well. This can be very useful when writing data collection applications so conformance to E164 is being required by more and more fabs. The E164 standard was developed to encourage companies using Interface A connections to provide a more common representation of equipment metadata based upon the SEMI E125 Specification for Equipment Self-Description. This makes data collection more uniform across these pieces of equipment.

Once the model is created and validated, it is deployed to the CIMPortal Plus server. The server is the component that manages and tracks all data collection plans, reports, tasks, access control and timing. 

With the DCIM information embedded in the model (described above), it is easy for the equipment control application to push the data to be published to the EDA server for collection. This is done by using a simple API available on the DCIM interface.

In addition to CIMPortal Plus server capabilities, Cimetrix has other products available to help with client-side data collection. ECCE Plus is an industry approved method for manually testing EDA implementations. For users who need to create client-side data collection applications, Cimetrix also provides EDAConnect - a powerful library that handles all the connection details and allows developers to concentrate on the specific data collection and analysis tasks.

Fabs receive a wide variety of equipment with EDA implementations from numerous vendors. They want to use a single verification application to make sure that all EDA implementations are compliant to the EDA standards. That’s where EDATester comes in. EDATester is a new product that allows users to quickly and accurately verify EDA standards compliance by automating the test procedures ISMI EDA Evaluation Method that were defined specifically for this purpose. If you use Cimetrix products to implement your EDA interface, you are guaranteed to be compliant with the SEMI EDA standards. But whether you use Cimetrix products to implement your EDA interface or not, you (and your fab customer) want to rest assured that your implementation is fully compliant. Moreover, you’ll want to know that you’ve met the fab’s performance criteria for your equipment interface. To support this use case, the EDATester also allows users to quickly profile the performance of EDA data collection on a piece of equipment so that fabs and those using the data will know the boundaries within which they can successfully collect equipment data.

With the well-stocked EDA tool box provided by Cimetrix, following the EDA best practices in creating an efficient, standards-compliant EDA interface becomes a snap.

One of the habits outlined in Stephen R. Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is to "Begin with the End in Mind." He goes on to explain that beginning with the end in mind means to "begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination, and then continue by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen.”

Beginning an equipment control project with a clear vision of your desired destination makes it much more likely that you will have a successful project. A blog post titled CIMControlFramework Work Breakdown dated March 15, 2016 outlined the tasks necessary to create a first-class equipment control application using CIMControlFramework (CCF). Since that initial blog post, Cimetrix has explored each of the tasks labeled in the work breakdown structure in greater depth in their own blog posts as follows:

• Integrate devices – Create Device Drivers Using CCF
• Material movement through the tool – Create a Scheduler Using CCF
• Implement the process module – Implementing Your Process Module Using CCF
• Create an operator interface (OI) – Create Operator Interface Screens Using CCF
• Simulation – Testing Your CCF Application without Waiting for Hardware
• Recipes – Designing Recipes in CCF
• I/O – Using CCF IO Helper Functionality
• Data collection and storage – Storing Data in a CCF Application
• Factory Automation – CCF Provides Fully Implemented GEM300 and EDA Interfaces
• Diagnostics and Testing – This information was provided previously in a two-part blog regarding the benefits of logging. Read Part 1 (Logging - enabling passionate support) and Part 2 (CIMControlFramework Logging Benefits).
• Errors and recovery – CCF provides an Alarms package for signaling of and recovery from error conditions.

Looking back from the successful completion of a CCF equipment control application makes it clear that the work breakdown vision from the beginning helped gain that success.

You can also reference the following blog posts related to CimControlFramework:

CIMControlFramework Dynamic Model Creation

Learning from Others

Build vs. Buy

WCF and CIMControlFramework

To learn more about CCF, visit the CIMControlFramework page on our website!

In Sir Arthur Conon Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock Holmes tells Watson, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

In a March 2016 blog post on CCF work breakdown Cimetrix listed eleven points to be taken into consideration when starting an equipment control application using CIMControlFramework (CCF). One of the tasks in the work breakdown is to determine what kind of data collection and storage is to be used in your CCF application and determine how that data is to be stored.

CCF provides several mechanisms for collecting and storing data. These include:

• History Objects

• Full GEM Interface

• Full EDA/Interface A Interface

• Centralized DataServer

The remainder of this blog post will look at each of these items in more detail.

History Objects

In early iterations of CCF, users noticed when using logging, there were certain messages that they wanted to be able to query without the overhead of having to search all log messages. To help accommodate this need, History objects were introduced. Some examples of these objects in CCF are EPT History, Wafer History and Alarm History. When an important event happens in the life of a history object, a log message is written to a database table (configured during CCF installation) that corresponds to that type of object. That database table can be queried for the specific historical information for only that type of data. 

Full GEM/GEM 300 Interface

As described in a CCF blog post from February 15, 2017, CCF comes standard with a fully implemented GEM and GEM 300 interface. The GEM standards allow users to set up trace and event reports for the collection of GEM data. No additional programming is required by the application developer to have access to the GEM data collection.

Full EDA/Interface A Interface

The same blog post of February 15th also states that CCF comes standard with a fully implemented Freeze II and E164 compliant EDA interface. EDA can be used to set up data collection plans based on Events, Exceptions and Traces. With the E157 standard and conditional trace triggers, EDA makes it easy to zero in on the data you want without having to collect all data and then sift through it later.

Centralized DataServer

In order to create, initialize, populate and pass data, CCF uses a centralized DataServer object. The DataServer is responsible for creating the dynamic EDA equipment modelas well as populating CIMConnect with Status Variables, Data Variables, Collection Events and Alarms. All this is done at tool startup so that the data available exactly matches the tool that is in use.

Data is routed to the DataServer which then updates the appropriate client – such as EDA, GEM or the Operator Interface. An equipment control application can register to receive an event from the data server when data changes. Users can key off of this event to capture that data and route it to a database as desired. Since all tool manufacturers have different requirements for which database to use and how data is written to that database, CCF leaves the actual SQL (or equivalent) commands for writing the data to the equipment application developer.

With CCF Data collection and storage is … Elementary.

To learn more about CCF, visit the CIMControlFramework page on our website!

Anyone above a certain age will be able to tell you what you get when you combine two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions – on a sesame seed bun. There are many who would argue that what sets a Big Mac apart from other burgers – and has made it one of the best-selling products of all time – is the special sauce.

In a March 2016 blog post, Cimetrix listed eleven points to be taken into consideration when starting an equipment control application using CIMControlFramework (CCF). One of the things to consider is how you want to provide process and path information through the tool using recipes. This blog post delves a little deeper into the recipe aspect of equipment control applications.

In CCF, recipes are either process recipes or sequence recipes.

A process recipe contains the instructions to be carried out by a particular process module. These instructions can range from temperature settings to types of gas to flow. The most important aspect of any tool control application is allowing the tool manufacturer to do what they do best – perform their process better than anyone else in the world. The process recipe allows tool manufacturers to add their special sauce to the wafer. CCF provides a sample process recipe implementation as well as very simple process recipe editor. Since recipes are generally custom for each tool manufacturer, CCF application developers usually want to customize the recipe contents for a process recipe.

If the processing of material is the special sauce, the rest of the application, moving the wafer through the tool, is a necessary evil. To assist in moving material through the tool, CCF also provides a sequence recipe. A sequence recipe determines which process recipes are to be run, at which modules to run them, and the order in which this is to occur. CCF provides a sample sequence recipe editor that can be used in creating sequence recipes or customized for each tool manufacturer’s needs.

Both process and sequence recipes can be created on the tool or downloaded from a factory host. CCF provides a handler that receives recipes from the host and stores them in the Recipe Server. Regardless of where the recipes are created, CCF’s Recipe Server stores the recipes locally and passes them in to the scheduler when a job is to be run. The Recipe Server allows recipes to be stored as Engineering recipes while they are being finalized. They can then be promoted to Production recipes for use in a production environment. 

By making use of recipes in CCF, you can ensure that your special sauce is applied to material processing to help make your tool one of the best-selling in history.

To learn more about CCF, visit the CIMControlFramework page on our website! 

How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. 

In a March 2016 blog post entitled CIMControlFramework Work Breakdown, Cimetrix listed eleven points to be taken into consideration when starting an equipment control application using CIMControlFramework (CCF). One of the things to consider is how you want to control the material moving through the tool – or scheduling of material. This blog post delves a little deeper into the scheduling aspect of equipment control applications.

Doctoral dissertations and entire books have been written to discuss scheduler theory. Because of sheer volume of information available regarding scheduling and scheduling theory, the topic can come across as a little (or a lot) intimidating. CCF aims to take the scare factor out of scheduling and allow equipment control application developers to fully control the movement of material through their tool.

CCF provides a framework for a reactive, rule-based scheduler. You, as the application developer and in conjunction with your customer needs, get to decide what decisions are important when creating your scheduler. One of the first things you need to do when developing a scheduler is to ask questions to help you determine the rules for scheduling. Some questions you may ask:

• What is the most important thing I am attempting to accomplish with my scheduler?

  • Is throughput the most important?

  • Is path predictability most important?

• How can I ensure that when I pick material up that there is a destination available to put it?

• If two components need a robot to take action (pick up or place material), which action takes precedence?

• Do the process chambers need to be prepared before receiving material to process?

• What is the wafer flow scenario (is there a specific order that material must follow)?

  • Does the material need to be aligned before processing?

  • Does the material need to be acclimatized before processing?

  • Does the material need to be cooled before returning to the carrier?

• Are there any maintenance tasks that have to be performed periodically in the tool that have to be accounted for in scheduling?

This is by no means an exhaustive list of questions, but these are the types of questions that need to be answered when creating your scheduler. 

The scheduling framework provided by CCF allows you to translate these rules into C# conditional statements. No proprietary scripting languages need to be learned. No specific configuration training is required. C# developers can use industry standard IDEs to put these rules into scheduling practice.

Once the scheduling rules are determined, it can still be intimidating to know how to start creating your scheduler. Cimetrix provides a few basic, as well as more advanced,of  scheduling labs that fully explain how to translate your rules into a functional scheduler. These labs can be completed in as little as a few hours. The labs explain the scheduling theory used by Cimetrix and allow users to create functional schedulers in a short amount of time. Many CCF users can create a working scheduler in one week.

Cimetrix also provides complete working examples of atmospheric and vacuum schedulers as part of CCF. Another lab provided by Cimetrix clearly describes how to start with one of these working schedulers and modify it to suit your scheduling needs.

The CCF scheduling framework allows the software to be hardware agnostic. In other words, it is not tightly coupled to device drivers. This allows tool manufacturers to change out hardware without having to make scheduler changes to support the new hardware.

Although scheduling may seem like an intimidating whale to eat, CCF helps break the tasks down into bite-sized chunks.

To learn more about CCF, visit the CIMControlFramework page on our website!

In a recent blog posting we introduced the topic of EDA (Equipment Data Acquisition) standards testing and sub-divided the domain into three parts:

• Compliance testing – does the equipment adhere to the specifications described in the SEMI Standards?

• Performance and stability testing – does the equipment meet the end users’ performance and availability specifications?

• Equipment metadata model conformance testing – does the equipment model delivered with the interface represent the tool structure and content anticipated by the end customer?

Today’s post deals with the equipment metadata model conformance testing in greater detail.

The impetus for the metadata conformance requirement is SEMI Standard E164 – Specification for EDA Common Metadata. Although this standard is not part of the original core suite of EDA standards, it is now being required by GLOBALFOUNDRIES and a number of other major semiconductor manufacturers on EDA-enabled equipment.

The purpose of the standard “is to promote commonality among implementations by defining common representations and conventions of equipment metadata based on SEMI E125.” (Section 1.1 of E164)

In other words, conformance to E164 requires a consistent implementation of E125. All state machines required by the GEM300 standards must be implemented and use the same names for required events, parameters, state names and transitions. It requires that all process modules implement the E157 Module Processing state machine using specified names. As a result, E164 ensures a high level of implementation commonality across all equipment types. This commonality enables better automation of data collection processes across the fab, driving major increases in engineering efficiency. In summary, E164 is to EDA what GEM was to SECS-II.

Currently, the only E164 conformance tester is Metadata Conformance Analyzer (MCA) that was commissioned by Sematech and implemented by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). In our discussions with potential users of an EDA test tool, most clients agree that the sooner a replacement can be created for MCA, the happier they will be.

In a previous post, we mentioned that Cimetrix has automated the EDA compliance evaluation procedures. We are also in the process of designing the performance testing components of this tester. The plan is to also create an E164 conformance tester that will replace MCA.

If you want to know more about EDA testing and/or discuss your specific needs or provide input on what you would like to see included for E164 conformance testing, contact Cimetrix for a demonstration of this exciting new capability!

Update: Cimetrix EDATester Datasheet available now!

In a recent blog posting we introduced the topic of EDA (Equipment Data Acquisition) standards testing and sub-divided the domain into three parts:

• Compliance testing – does the equipment adhere to the specifications described in the SEMI Standards?

• Performance and stability testing – does the equipment meet the end users’ performance and availability specifications?

• Equipment metadata model conformance testing – does the equipment model delivered with the interface represent the tool structure and content anticipated by the end customer?

Today's post deals with the performance and stability testing in greater detail.

In our discussions with EDA users (both OEM implementers and fab end users) about EDA testing, they all acknowledge the need for compliance testing. However, the vast majority have said, “If you can help me automate my performance testing, I would be able to save a huge amount of time.” Most thought they could reduce testing time from several weeks to just a couple of days.

Everyone has different ideas about what should be included in performance testing of their EDA software. Everyone can agree that generally they need to test if the equipment meets the end users’ performance and availability specifications in terms of data sampling intervals, overall data volume transmitted, size and number of DCPs (data collection plans) supported, demands on the computing/network resources, and up-time. They also need to know if the software will support the range of application clients expect in a production environment.

Data Volume

EDA users want to know the sheer volume of data that can be collected.

ISMI has reported in public forums that IC makers expect EDA to achieve data rates of 50+ variables per chamber at rates up to 10 Hz. In EDA specifications, IC makers have requested the ability to gather 1,000 to 2,000 parameters using data collection rates from 5 to 20 Hz, which translates to 40,000 values per second.

These rates are easily achievable with today’s computing platform technology, but users also want to know the upper limit. In other words, at what point does the ability to collect data break down?

Data Quality

EDA users want to know that the data comes in at the specified rates and that the values and timestamps that are received at those rates are accurate.

Resource Usage

EDA users want to know how different data collection rates and volumes will affect the system resources. Will memory usage be too high? How will different collection rates affect CPU usage? Is the network bandwidth sufficient for gathering the required data at the required speeds and still maintain high data quality?

In a previous post, we mentioned that Cimetrix has automated the EDA compliance evaluation procedures. The newly released Cimetrix EDATester^TM is the integrated solution that supports the broadest range of use cases in SEMI Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA/Interface A) standards compliance testing in the industry. The Cimetrix EDATester automates the execution of the ISMI EDA Evaluation Method and features performance testing that characterizes the capabilities and limitations of a tool’s EDA interface. Download the data sheet and see how the Cimetrix EDATester supports your objectives. 

If you want to know more about EDA testing and/or discuss your specific needs, contact Cimetrix for a demonstration of this exciting new capability!

When my daughter turned one year old, she got a very soft blanket as a birthday present. She loved that blanket and would take it everywhere with her. She couldn’t/wouldn’t go to sleep at night without it. When she got old enough to talk, she called it her special blanket or “spesh.” Needless to say, after many years of toting that blanket around, it started to wear out – in fact, it started getting downright nasty. She adamantly refused to part with it even though it was just a rag with little redeeming value.

A couple of years ago, Microsoft made the following announcement: “After 12 years, support for Windows XP ended April 8, 2014. There will be no more security updates or technical support for the Windows XP operating system. It is very important that customers and partners migrate to a modern operating system.”

In the immortal words of Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy from Star Trek, “It’s dead Jim!”

Many arguments have been proffered on both sides as to why users should stay with or move away from XP. Windows XP was first introduced in 2001. That makes the operating system 15 years old — an eternity in computer years. The main argument I see for upgrading from XP is that it is impossible to keep up with advances to the .NET framework and remain on the old operating system. By staying with XP, you are missing out on new features and technologies. These features include taking advantage of better hardware integration for improved system performance and being able to use 64-bit applications and memory space.

Since Microsoft no longer supports XP and no longer provides security updates for the OS, staying with XP is a security risk. Any security holes that have been discovered since Microsoft withdrew support have been ruthlessly targeted.

To come full circle, my daughter finally did give up the little rag that she had left of the blanket. I don’t remember what ultimately made her give it up. She is now 18 and a few months ago, we came across that small piece of her special little blanket that we had stored away. The rag brought back good memories, but we were both glad it had been retired. Isn’t it time to do the same with XP?♦

Have you ever watched one of those cooking shows where the chef spends a lot of time whipping up the ingredients to some elaborate dish, and, when it comes time to put the dish in the oven to bake, there is already a finished one in there? If only the real world worked that way. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to go to the oven and have a delicious meal already waiting for you.

The Cimetrix CIMControlFramework™ (CCF) product is unique among Cimetrix products in that it not only provides source code, but also combines several other Cimetrix products (CIMConnect™, CIM300™, and CIMPortal™ Plus) and takes full advantage of all the features provided by each product.

One of the features of CIMPortal Plus that is used in CCF is the concept of an equipment model. The equipment model describes the data that your equipment provides through Interface A. The tool hierarchy is modeled along with all of the parameters, events, and exceptions published by the tool. It used to be that CCF users had to manually create the tool hierarchy in their base equipment model. CCF would then populate the model with the parameters, events, and exceptions. If the tool hierarchy changed, the base model would have to be modified. It made changing the tool configuration much more difficult.

Starting with the CCF 4.0 release, a base equipment model that is common to all equipment was installed. Generally, CCF users will not need to modify the base model. CCF takes advantage of the modeling API provided by CIMPortal Plus to dynamically add hierarchy nodes to the base model depending on the components that are created in CCF. This new feature makes it easy to change the configuration of the CCF tool because the user does not have to make modifications to the base model and redeploy the package to be able to run CCF.

The dynamically created model is also compliant with the SEMI E164 Common Metadata standard. This compliance is possible because of the dynamic nature of model creation. The required elements of E164 are added to the equipment model dynamically during the startup of Tool Supervisor.

Having a dynamically created Interface A model that exactly matches your equipment structure and is guaranteed to be E164-compliant without having to do any extra work is similar to going to the oven and finding a delicious dish already cooked and waiting for you.♦

To learn more about CCF, visit the CIMControlFramework page on our website!