Patent ID: 7346883
Filing Date: 2008-03-18
Classification: G01N,G05B,G06F,G06Q,H01L,Y02P

Abstract:
1. A system for the integrated archiving, restoring, purging, importing and exporting of semiconductor wafer data for use in silicon manufacturing and device fabrication processes, comprising: a network; a data acquisition system capable of acquiring scan data from differing types of semiconductor wafer scanning tools, the data acquisition system being capable of communicating over the network; a buffer system for providing temporary storage for scan data transmitted over the network from the data acquisition system and for providing fault tolerance; a server system for providing storage for the scan data transmitted from the buffer system over the network, the server system converting the scan data into a format used by and stored in a database management system; and an analysis system client station including a display and communicating with the server system over the network, the analysis system and the server system being capable of operating as a transfer manager for purging, archiving, restoring, importing and exporting scan data, wherein the analysis system comprises a composite wafer analysis module which permits scan data from multiple wafers to be overlaid into a single wafer dataset; wherein the transfer manager further comprises an archive and restore tool for ingesting archived scan data from a designated database and restoring it to a designated database in designated location; wherein the transfer manager further comprises a multi-plant data management system having the capability to transfer and share scan data between different physical sites; and wherein the multi-plant data management system further comprises a user specified procedure for directing the archive and restore tool to export scan data to at least one other site so that scan data from at least two sites can be reviewed for process optimization.