Apparatus and methods for providing a homogenous i/o interface for controlling a heterogenous mixture of hardware i/o systems

Abstract

Disclosed are apparatus and methods for controlling a heterogeneous mixture of hardware devices in a variety of semiconductor process equipment. In general, a generic Input and Output (I/O) interface is provided between a process management module for specifying control operations and the actual hardware devices of a particular process tool. The process management module generally includes high level processes and/or user interfaces for controlling one or more process tool(s) by interacting with a set of generic device objects that are abstractions of actual hardware devices of such tool(s). The I/O interface translates interactions with the generic device objects into interactions with the different hardware devices. The process management module utilizes one or more of these generic device objects to specify operation, in a generic manner, of hardware devices and the I/O interface translates such operations into operations that are specific to the different hardware devices. As a result of this interface that manages and separates the interactions with the generic device objects from interactions with the hardware, both the process management module and the generic device objects can remain unchanged when changes occur to the hardware configuration or to an individual hardware device.