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AssigneeNovellus Systems, Inc.
InventorsJaideep Jain, Stanley P. Liu, Janet Yi, Eileen A. H. Wong, Sofya B. Malitsky, Thomas Hentschel
Estimating the term…
A scheduler handles the various tasks to be performed on a wafer processing system as operations, with each operation having a predefined data structure. Operations that meet a set of requirements are added to an operation list. In the operation list, operations meeting another set of requirements are switched to the active state. Each active operation in the operation list is scheduled to run on the wafer processing system. Using structured operations to perform various tasks improves the extensibility and maintainability of the present scheduler. Further, the present scheduler can schedule several compatible operations at the same time by going through each operation in the operation list, and running those that are in the active state.
A method for scheduling tasks in a wafer processing system comprising:
A wafer processing system including a computer, said computer having a computer readable storage memory containing a plurality of operations that can be run on said wafer processing system, said computer readable storage memory further containing instructions for (a) adding at least one of said plurality of operations to an operation list, (b) switching an operation in said operation list to an active state, and (c) scheduling all operations in said operation list that are in the active state to run, wherein at least one operation in the operation list including a sequence of actions for performing fabrication steps on a semiconductor wafer.
A data structure for an operation to be performed on a wafer processing system comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.