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ISMI symposium mixes number-crunching, practical solutions to good effect |
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Oct 16, 2006 at 11:36 AM |
The third annual International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI) Symposium on Manufacturing Effectiveness, which wrapped last week in Austin, has come into its own.
The event has become--along with the Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC) and International Symposium on Semiconductor Manufacturing (ISSM)--one of the top three conferences focused on both the high-level statistics-driven and practical nitty-gritty aspects of chip manufacturing.
Dozens of presentations addressed the heady swirl of the increasingly important numbers game, delving into subjects such as virtual metrology, hierarchical modeling, analytics, Q control charts, automated regression test selection, gamma distributions, and random effects models. These approaches ranged from tool- and module-specific to fab- and enterprisewide "solutions."
It's become clear that any tools that could help engineers and techs in the fabs (and their management) get a handle on useful modeling and statistics, tools that allow them to employ these methods in an effective, real-time manner to enhance productivity and boost yields--THAT HELP THEM DO THEIR JOBS BETTER--are and will continue to be much in demand.
But the ISMI symposium was not just about pure number-crunching or hypotheticals. Take K.T. Kuo of TSMC's presentation on prolonging reclaimed-wafers' lives. According to Kuo, the foundry's program to reduce nonproduct wafer (NPW) costs has been quite successful to date. The average wafer reclaim removal thickness and new NPW usage rate have been cut in half. Double wafer reclaim lifetimes have been prolonged, with reclaim sources increasing by 40%. These improvements have helped reduce reclaim costs by some $10 million per year, while the reclaim yield rate jumped from 65% to 80% as of 2Q06.
Although statistical methods, modeling, and simulation play ever-more-critical roles in chipmaking, it's nice to know that some good ol' roll-up-your-sleeves, "we got a problem, so let's figure out how to fix it" engineering schemes like the TSMC reclaim work can still play a major role in boosting a fab's manufacturing effectiveness.
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