Method and apparatus for monitoring host to tool communications
AssigneeMKS Instruments, Inc.
InventorsUzi Lev-Ami, Yossef Ilan Reich
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An aspect of the present invention includes a method and device for listening to communications between processes and tools, recording report and report trigger definitions, matching reports from tools with the recorded definitions, and translating messages into a context-insensitive format. Other aspects of the present invention include dynamically enhancing tool status reports, migrating processes form tool control hosts to distributed processors, and screening requests for tool status information from hosts and distributed processors. More detailed descriptions of aspects of the present invention are described in the claims, specification and drawings.
Claims28
A method of making accessible context-sensitive data reported by a tool to a tool host, the method including:
- providing a removable listening device to monitor a wired communications channel between one or more tool hosts and one or more tools;
- recording report and report trigger definitions sent by the tool hosts to the tools;
- matching a first triggered report from the tools with the report and report trigger definitions to generate a first context-insensitive report before processing a second triggered report;
- outputting the first context-insensitive report in a field tagged format.
A method of dynamically annotating tool status reports, the method including:
- providing a removable listening device to monitor wired communications between one or more tool hosts and one or more tools;
- recording report definitions sent by the tool hosts to the tools, said report definitions defining tool status information to be reported upon happening of a trigger;
- recording report trigger definitions sent by the tool hosts to the tools, said report trigger definitions defining events that trigger reporting;
- and
- matching a first triggered report from the tools with the report and report trigger definitions to generate a first context-insensitive report before processing a second triggered report, the reports not being accompanied by the report or report trigger definitions.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.