Patent ID: 7965373

Claim:
A lithography apparatus, comprising: a patterning device comprising an array of individually controllable elements configured to impart a pattern to a cross-section of a beam of radiation; a projection system configured to project the patterned beam of radiation onto a target portion of a substrate; a data processing pipeline configured to convert a first data representation of a requested dose pattern to a sequence of control data suitable for controlling respective individually controllable elements in the array of individually controllable elements to form the pattern in the beam using the patterning device, such that the requested dose pattern is formed on a substrate, the data processing pipeline comprising, a plurality of data manipulation devices, and a calculation load controller configured to divide the first data representation into a plurality of data packets, each corresponding to one of a set of sub-regions of the requested dose pattern corresponding to subsets of the individually controllable elements in the patterning device, and configured to forward each of the data packets to a respective one of the data manipulation devices, wherein the calculation load controller is configured to select the data packets to forward to each of the data manipulation devices so as to balance a total calculation load between the data manipulation devices, and wherein the calculation load controller is configured to control a size of each of the sub-regions according to at least one of a degree of pattern irregularity, a pattern entropy, and a compression ratio of the portion of the requested dose pattern corresponding to that sub-region.