Applied Materials, Inc.

Natalia Kroupnova

Thorsten Kril

Aleksey Yanovich

Mikhail B Kozine

Michael E Wilmer

Terry P Reiss

Sherry Cordova

Clari Nolet

Yukari Nishimura

Richard C Lyon

Woon Young Toh

Terry Lee Doyle

Evgueni Lobovski

Inna Louneva

A method and apparatus for automatically providing a virtual sensor have been described. In one embodiment, a method for automatically providing a virtual sensor includes receiving a plurality of virtual sensor templates from a server. The method further includes selecting a virtual sensor template from the plurality of virtual sensor templates. The selected virtual sensor template has an algorithm to provide a desired functionality. The method further includes selecting at least one parameter to configure the selected virtual sensor template. The method further includes automatically creating a virtual sensor associated with the selected virtual sensor template.

Method and apparatus to automatically create virtual sensors with templates

A method and apparatus for providing a virtual sensor in real-time have been described. In one embodiment, a method to provide a virtual sensor in real-time includes identifying data indicating desired functionality. The method further includes executing the virtual sensor in real-time based on the identified data to generate an output of the virtual sensor with the output being used by at least one data analysis module in real-time for statistical process monitoring.

Virtual sensors

The present invention provides a semiconductor processing device () including a tool () having one or more sensors, a primary data communication port () and a secondary data communication port (). A sensor data acquisition subsystem () acquires sensor data from the tool via the secondary port (). The data acquisition subsystem () acquires MES operation messages via the primary port (). Sensor data are communicated to a sensor processing unit () of a sensor data processing subsystem (). The sensor processing unit () processes and analyzes the sensor data. Additionally, the processing unit () can be adapted for making product or processing related decisions, for example activating an alarm if the process is not operating within control limits. In another embodiment, the present invention provides a method and apparatus for processing data from a wafer fab facility () including a plurality of tools () each having a primary data communication port () and a secondary data communication port ().

Wafer fabrication data acquisition and management systems

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Natalia Kroupnova