A Fab-Wide APC Sampling Application

In microprocessor manufacturing it is very important to monitor the processed material on certain metrology steps. This is done in order to characterize the manufacturing process by verifying correct processing and ensuring availability of adequate information on the contributors to process variance. In state-of-the-art technologies it has become increasingly challenging to measure all possible and relevant sources of variation. Because low cycle time (manufacturing duration) is of such high importance, it is necessary to minimize the amount of inspection operations/duration on processed material. This paper details the integrated lot-level and wafer-level sampling application deployed in AMD's Fab30 and Fab36, which is capable of providing the means to capture lot, wafer, and event-based sources of variation by best utilizing the available metrology resources. It will also highlight the connection of this application into the areas of advanced-process-control, run-to-run, fault-detection and classification (APC, RtR, FDC).