Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp. Ltd.

Jensen Yang

Shy-Jay Lin

Yen-Hao Huang

Wen-Chuan Wang

Cheng-Chi Wu

A method for routing data for an e-beam writer includes, with a switching device of the e-beam writer, receiving a packet. The method further includes, with a scheduling engine of the switching device, routing the packet to one of a plurality of output buffers, wherein the routing is based on availabilities of the plurality of output buffers and vacancy levels of memory devices associated with the plurality of output buffers. The method further includes, with the switching device, outputting the packet from an output port associated with a memory device to which the packet is routed.

Data processing of electron beam lithography system

A method includes receiving, by an input buffer of a switching device, a packet, determining, by a scheduling engine of the switching device, a destination output buffer for the packet, receiving, by the scheduling engine of the switching device, an availability of the destination output buffer and a vacancy level of a memory device that is associated with the destination output buffer, and based on the availability of the destination output buffer and the vacancy level of the memory device, determining, by the scheduling engine of the switching device, a routing destination of the packet. The routing destination includes the input buffer, the destination output buffer, and the memory device.

A system includes a digital pattern generator (DPG) having a plurality of pixels that are dynamically and individually controllable; a switching device that is coupled to the DPG, the switching device configured to route a packet to the DPG so as to control at least one of the pixels, the switching device further comprising: a plurality of input buffers configured to receive and store the packet through a transmission line; a plurality of output buffers; a plurality of memory devices, wherein each of the plurality of memory devices is associated with one of the plurality of output buffers; and a scheduling engine that is coupled to the plurality of input buffers, the plurality of output buffers, and the plurality of memory devices and is configured to determine a routing path for the packet stored in one of the input buffers based on an availability of the output buffers and a vacancy level the memory devices.

A system and method for maskless direct write lithography are disclosed. The method includes receiving a plurality of pixels that represent an integrated circuit (IC) layout; identifying a first subset of the pixels that are suitable for a first compression method; and identifying a second subset of the pixels that are suitable for a second compression method. The method further includes compressing the first and second subset using the first and second compression method respectively, resulting in compressed data. The method further includes delivering the compressed data to a maskless direct writer for manufacturing a substrate. In embodiments, the first compression method uses a run-length encoding and the second compression method uses a dictionary-based encoding. Due to the hybrid compression method, the compressed data can be decompressed with a data rate expansion ratio sufficient for high-volume IC manufacturing.

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Zhubei, Taiwan

Jensen Yang