Software engineering for semiconductor manufacturing equipment suppliers

The growing cost and the lack of reliability of many semiconductor CIM components, particularly the software that controls processing equipment, can to a large extent be attributed to the growing pains of an industry that finds itself moving rapidly from a hardware-intensive to a software-intensive environment. Indeed, equipment suppliers now share with other critical industries (such as aerospace or robotics) a need for excellent software engineering practices and tools. These are increasingly key to being able to supply quality products to their customers. In this paper, we examine in more detail the issues that exist in the equipment industry with respect to software development; we explore some of the causes for this situation; we present the elements of a complete approach to the improvement of software capabilities (with applicability to software suppliers and system integrators as well as to equipment makers) and indicate the interdependency between these various elements. We conclude by indicating practical steps that can be taken by suppliers to redress the current lag in software engineering capability