Collaboration is Key in E-Diagnostics
Peter Singer, Editor-in-Chief -- Semiconductor International, 7/1/2003
Some of the benefits of e-diagnostics, where the manufacturer of a tool and/or fab personnel can remotely examine how well the equipment is operating, are fairly obvious, at least when it comes to field service. In some cases, the equipment can actually be fixed remotely, perhaps by installing a new software patch. In other cases, the cause of a problem can be isolated and the parts necessary to repair it pre-ordered so that when the field service repair specialist actually arrives at the factory, there's less guessing and the right parts are there, so the fix is faster and the equipment back on-line more quickly.
This has been going on in some form for more than 12 years, first over telephone lines, then ISDN lines, and now over the Internet or virtual private networks (VPNs). And OEMs are seeing the benefits: KLA-Tencor, for example, reports that its e-diagnostics support group, which it calls iSupport, was able to provide assistance 68% of the time in the case of one customer (see "E-Manufacturing: The Evolution Continues ").
But the true value of e-diagnostics is only beginning to be understood. Take, for example, the new capabilities at IBM's 300 mm factory in East Fishkill, N.Y., where ~25% of the tools are linked to what's called an "e-Centre" developed by ILS Technologies (all of the tools are expected to be linked by year's end). Like many companies that are going it alone in terms of investing in a 300 mm fab, IBM is looking at foundry models to recoup its investment and maintain the facility in this cyclical environment. "The notion that a fabless semiconductor company or customer will need access to the fab to monitor process equipment while their wafers are being run suggests that e-diagnostics will play beyond just this after-market support process domain for equipment manufacturers, but rather enable an entirely new frontier in the engineering-design collaboration space," said Steven Kind, IBM's industry solutions executive-electronics.
Imagine fabless customers logging on and monitoring their wafer tester as their wafers are being run. The design team — which could be a collection of partners, contract manufacturers, other design houses, and foundry design engineers — could work collaboratively over the test data as it is coming off the machine, and use that data to rapidly make modifications to their design. "Reducing that cycle will allow them to reach production ramp sooner, and that's significantly beneficial to them," Kind said. "You measure those types of saving in the billions of dollars, not hundreds or millions, when you're first to market and can command a price for a given chip."
Rich Mason, president of ILS Technology (Boca Raton, Fla.), added, "To a great extent, e-diagnostics is something, once you get into it, you understand what its capability can be, and then creativity takes over and the big savings occur. We're still in the front end of discovery of the capability. The capability comes from the collaboration and unlocking of the information for the constituents."
The good news for the industry is that e-diagnostics standards are close to final approval at this month's SEMICON West. Interface A is a set of standards developed by International SEMATECH and SEMI that defines a dataport specifically for e-diagnostics. This should make the kind of capability that IBM now has within easier reach of other device makers. While many of the larger equipment suppliers should have no problem conforming to these new specifications, others beware: The ability to meet this standard could very soon be showing up on purchase orders.
E-diagnostics is clearly going to go way beyond simply remote tool monitoring and diagnostics. With the ability to exchange files, do advanced process control, run fault-detection algorithms and multivariate statistical analysis, an e-diagnostics platform will become the new "watering hole" where all kinds of folks will gather to drink in the data, not just OEMs and field service engineers, but fab engineers, managers and chip designers.
