Genmark Automation's Gift Software Suite™ Provides Highly Flexible, Configurable Solutions for Automating 300mm Processes

[PDF:150KB]

MILPITAS, Calif., July 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Genmark Automation, Inc., a leader in tool and factory automation solutions for the global semiconductor industry, today announced it will be featuring its Genmark Automation Integration Framework and Technology (GIFT™) suite of software solutions at SEMICON West, July 14 to 16, at San Francisco's Moscone Center. The GIFT™ software platform is specially designed to meet today's most stringent automation requirements for fabs manufacturing devices on 300mm wafers.

According to Eugene Bonev, director of software engineering, Genmark Automation developed the GIFT™ suite in direct response to growing customer demand for an extremely flexible 300mm automation solution that enables fab operators to effortlessly "talk" to various process modules -- including wafer-handling robots, pre-aligners, wafer ID readers, carriers, front-opening unified pod (FOUP) openers and minienvironment controllers. "Our GIFT suite offers the industry's most inclusive set of software solutions, tools and methods to meet OEMs' and end users' strict requirements for their highly automated 300mm fab and tool environments. GIFT's flexibility and ease of use are unmatched in the industry," said Bonev.

Genmark Automation is one of the first suppliers to offer the level of performance monitoring and tracking found in the GIFT Tool Suite™. The platform enables testing of each process module individually, or of the entire system, to ensure customers' requirements are met.

The engineered simplicity of Genmark Automation's GIFT Software Suite™ is evident in its off-the-shelf factory host-computer interface, which offers the most comprehensive, yet easiest to use, implementation of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI)-compliant standards on the market. GIFT™ also features an advanced user interface, a broad range of supported automation hardware and presets for most of today's 300mm semiconductor fab requirements. Other key GIFT features include a unique, ready-to-use device-driver library, hardware simulation, automated testing, database-controlled documentation, performance monitoring and automated robot teaching.

GIFT™ Architecture and Benefits
At the heart of the GIFT™ architecture, which operates on Windows NT, 2000 or XP, is the GIFT Server™. It features a highly customizable user interface and COM-based application-programming interface. The communication with the factory host is facilitated by the GEM Engine, which manages all SECS (SEMI Equipment Communication Standard) transactions and implements all GEM (Generic Equipment Model) requirements such as data tracing and event reporting. The design of the GIFT server complies with SEMI's E98 standard (Object-based Equipment Model), with the system and all hardware devices modeled as E98 objects. The Job Executor (compliant with E40 / E94) coordinates the material transport inside the equipment with the recipes' execution by each process module, and all the Job Executor definitions are stored in XML format. This mechanism offers high flexibility combined with simplicity of implementation.

The GIFT Server™ can be used as a standalone application and has a full-featured graphical user interface (GUI) that complies with SEMI Standard E95 guidelines. The components of the GIFT Server™ include job editor and monitor, material tracking interface, user account management, maintenance screen for each equipment module, and alarm handler, to name a few. The GIFT Server™ exports a set of interfaces dedicated to the integration of custom process modules, simplifying software engineers' job by offering a set of COM events divided into groups related to specific functional requirements, including operation control, recipe management, material transfer, exception handling and GEM support. In addition, a comprehensive set of source code examples in VC, VB and Delphi simplifies the implementation process.

GIFT's simulation mode enables tool qualification prior to hardware installation. Its built-in device simulators allow execution of very precise regression tests without the need for actual hardware. In addition to the factory host communication standards, GIFT™ offers more than 400 test plans to verify all aspects of the system operation. The tests can be fully automatic or performed manually, and test results are saved in a report to enable further analysis.

The GIFT™ platform describes tool configuration in a dedicated database. Its reports are formatted to generate data definitions for documentation, for use in a programming environment and for communication with the factory host computer. The single source of configuration information ensures the integrity of the documentation with all data definitions.

About Genmark Automation
Genmark Automation, Inc. is a worldwide leading supplier of factory automation solutions for the semiconductor, flat panel display (FPD) and data storage manufacturing industries. It provides customers with turnkey, highly sophisticated hardware and software automation solutions for both atmospheric and vacuum environments, supporting numerous applications across the semiconductor, FPD and data storage fabrication industries. OEM and fab customers leverage Genmark’s Automation technologies to maximize equipment productivity in dynamic manufacturing environments. More information about Genmark Automation is available at its Website, www.genmarkautomation.com

---