New Software May Control the Future of Semiconductor Industry
The U.S. semiconductor industry is being transformed by new software that increases process consistency and yield and, according to the industry's road map, will help maintain the historical 25 percent to 30 percent annual growth in productivity. The advanced process control (APC) technology was designed and demonstrated by Honeywell, Inc. (Minneapolis, Minn.) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) (Austin, Texas) in cooperation with SEMATECH, an industry consortium, and with co-funding from NIST's Advanced Technology Program (ATP). Until now, the adoption of APC has been impeded by the high cost and risk associated with time-consuming custom integration of static, single-task controllers into existing manufacturing systems. By bringing together key partners with complementary expertise, the 27-month ATP project, which ended in mid-1998, hastened the development of a flexible, universal toolset that can be deployed rapidly across process areas and factories with minimal custom integration. U.S. firms now have a head start of up to two years on foreign competitors in implementing APC and ownership of a valuable new technology, project participants say. The APC framework coordinates various types of manufacturing systems, process control tools, and wafer fabrication equipment. The software not only detects and classifies faults immediately but also adapts processing as needed from one run (e.g., wafer or batch) to the next, by tweaking the "recipes" used to operate equipment. Specific advances achieved in the ATP project include an 83 percent reduction in photolithography rework, a 27 percent reduction in the standard deviation in material-removal rate during wafer polishing, and a 48 percent reduction in variability in microprocessor speed. The latter advance enabled AMD to increase the mean microprocessor speed without losses in yield and bring faster devices to market sooner than otherwise would have been possible. The specifications developed in the project are on their way to becoming industry standards. The APC technology has been licensed to ObjectSpace Fab Solutions of Austin, Texas, a project subcontractor, which will commercialize it in early 1999. Pilot systems have been developed for Motorola, Inc., and IBM Microelectronics. Meanwhile, Honeywell is looking for ways to adapt the framework for use in other industrial process-control applications. ATP funding: $4,907,000 March 1999 |