Patent Document ID: 7769482
Application ID: 11877228
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method comprising: controlling operation of a semiconductor manufacturing system with a state machine to schedule processing of one or more workpieces, the state machine including a plurality of states associated by a plurality of transitions, each one of the plurality of transitions having a weight assigned thereto, the semiconductor manufacturing system forming a vacuum environment for processing the one or more workpieces and including a mid-entry load lock positioned between at least two other load locks to the vacuum environment, the mid-entry load lock configured to at least one of add the workpiece to the vacuum environment and remove the workpiece from the vacuum environment; receiving data from the semiconductor manufacturing system; calculating the weight assigned to each one of a number of possible transitions from a current state of the plurality of states by applying the data as inputs to a neural network; and selecting a transition from the current state of the plurality of states by evaluating the weight assigned to each one of the number of possible transitions from the current state.