Message Discovery in SEMI Communication for Rapid Equipment Integration

This paper is based on a research effort aimed at developing a generic device interface and a protocol discovery methodology that can discover user-defined messages of an otherwise standard protocol. Our research focus is on the SEMI standard protocols used in communication between semiconductor manufacturing equipment and host stations for various purposes like recipe downloading, status enquiry, and process monitoring through data retrieval. This paper describes an in-house developed methodology and framework for discovering user-defined messages from an "unknown" machine in order to rapidly set up communication with a host station based on existing knowledge, logic rules, and "deciphered" communication packets from host-initiated enquiries. This method allows an equipment builder to shorten the delivery time of a newly developed machine because it automates the communication configuration. The end-user benefits from our method because he can start integration of "unknown" equipment at a much earlier stage because of the automatic configuration of the communication middleware.