Its flexibility, modularity and open architecture design provides equipment makers with control software which fits to a variety of process tool configurations - from single to multiple process module designs. The modular software is ready to link into factory automation networks via standard industry communications interfaces. The cluster recipe consists of a list of process recipes which include the process specification for each participating process module of the cluster recipe. The integrated scheduler utilizes a predictive, real-time reactive, optimizing mechanism to maximize wafer flow throughputs. This software module performs a pre-calculation of each action as well as a recalculation in case of error to guarantee the desired process times.
Separate queues allow the parallel recipe execution if no resource conflict is detected.
Each material may be processed with a different recipe. Subsequent materials using the same cluster recipe are grouped together in one job. All important data are held in nonvolatile memory. A cyclic timestamp is stored to allow the estimation of time if an unexpected powerdown occurs. By analyzing ARAM statistics data the factory efficiency can be improved.