Patent ID: 7725205

Claim:
A system for controlling a heterogeneous mixture of hardware controller and/or devices associated with a semiconductor process tool, the system comprising: a process management module that is configurable to control a plurality of hardware devices of a semiconductor process tool; a plurality of generic device objects upon which the process management module is operable to indirectly control corresponding hardware devices of the semiconductor process tool via a reconfigurable mapping between the generic devices and a plurality of selected communication channels of the hardware devices, wherein each generic device object is controllable in a generic manner that is independent of a particular communication protocol utilized by the corresponding hardware device, wherein the reconfigurable mapping is alterable so as to correspond to different sets of communications channels of different sets of hardware devices that utilize different sets of communication protocols; and a device interface module for translating each generic operation performed with respect to a selected generic device object into a translated protocol-specific operation performed with respect to the selected generic object's corresponding hardware device and its respective communication protocol and for inputting the translated operations to the corresponding hardware devices so as to control operation of such corresponding hardware devices, wherein the device interface module is configured to translate the generic operation into the corresponding hardware device's communication protocol as specified by the reconfigurable mapping of the selected generic device.