ISMI Victory: Interface A Ready for Manufacturing

Productivity gains resulting from larger wafers, smaller device features, and 90% and greater yields are now assumed. Hence, equipment utilization and manufacturing effectiveness have become targets for further improvement. Because productivity can be improved by access to additional equipment and factory data, ISMI's e-Manufacturing initiative has focused on data acquisition to enable factories to become capable of data-driven, real-time, automated decision-making. IC makers need these types of factories to support shrinking feature sizes and to increase overall factory productivity. This paper describes a series of steps ISMI used to prepare the industry for implementing a second data port, interface A.