Patent ID: 7127304

Claim:
A method of determining a substantially optimal target controller state of a target process control system, the target process control system utilizing a target process control model in conjunction with the determined substantially optimal target controller state to direct a target semiconductor processing tool to execute a target process so as to likely achieve substantially optimal process results from the target process without further substantial adjustment of the determined substantially optimal target controller state, the method comprising: identifying an exemplar semiconductor processing tool having an exemplar process control system and an exemplar process control model, the exemplar process control model and exemplar semiconductor processing tool being substantially similar to the target process control model and the target semiconductor processing tool, the exemplar process control model and exemplar semiconductor processing tool having been used previously to execute both the target process and an exemplar process; determining a first controller state of the exemplar process control system as a result of at least one execution of the target process on the exemplar semiconductor processing tool; determining a second controller state of the exemplar process control system as a result of at least one execution of the exemplar process on the exemplar semiconductor processing tool; computing a process delta between the first and second controller states; determining a third controller state of the target process control system as a result of at least one execution of the exemplar process on the target semiconductor processing tool; computing a tool delta between the second and third controller states; and computing the substantially optimal target controller state based on the third controller state and the process delta and the tool delta.