The development and implementation of a cell controller framework

National Semiconductor Corporation (NSC) was selected by SEMATECH as one of two semiconductor companies for pilot testing a cell control architecture that is referred to as the strategic cell controller (SCC) throughout this paper. SCC is an architecture for semiconductor equipment real time control, monitoring, and integration to the rest of the factory. SCC was developed with the objective of supplying the industry with a common framework for cell controllers. This paper describes the architecture framework of the SCC under the NSC fabrication automation context. The heart of SCC is the integrated tool architecture that provides a logical configuration and integration of software automation tools for real time control capabilities in a truly distributed processing and client/server manner. SCC also provides a generic layer of equipment interfaces named ´virtual factory equipment interfaces´ (VFEI) that can accommodate many other industry standards for equipment interface.