Measuring the Performance of XML-Based Data Standards

Published

September 23, 2004

Author(s)

Eric D. Simmon, Gino Crispieri

Abstract

The semiconductor fabrication plant floor is a constantly changing environment. As equipment and fabrication process complexity increases, larger quantities of data are being generated, transferred and processed. New data encoding standards are being developed to enable the heterogeneous federation of equipment present in a fabrication facility to communicate. Many of these standards are XML-based for flexibility. While XML has many advantages, the increased overhead of the tag and text based format increases file sizes and processing requirements. It is unknown how these increases will effect data collection. The ability to convert data from a program's internal data structure to a standardized external format is a potential bottle neck in the transfer of data from an instrument to the fabrication control center. This conversion, or marshaling, must be done in a timely manner within the time interval between datasets. Likewise in most circumstances it will be necessary to convert the data back to an internal data structure (referred to as unmarshaling). By combining these marshaling/unmarshaling measurements with an estimate of networking performance one can obtain an understanding of total data collection throughput. This paper describes a methodology for testing the marshaling/unmarshaling performance. The SEMI 3509 Data Collection Management (DCM) specification is used as a test case. In particular, the marshaling and unmarshaling performance of the 3509 trace report is investigated. Key factors effecting marshaling performance are discussed along with methods of measuring performance.

Proceedings Title

AEC/APC Symposium XVI

Conference Dates

September 18-23, 2004

Conference Location

Westminster, CO, USA

Pub Type

Conferences

Keywords

3509, fabrication, marshaling, performance SEMI, semiconductor, XML

Citation

Simmon, E. and Crispieri, G. (2004), Measuring the Performance of XML-Based Data Standards, AEC/APC Symposium XVI, Westminster, CO, USA (Accessed April 25, 2024)