Data processing: generic control systems or specific application – Specific application – apparatus or process – Product assembly or manufacturing
Reexamination Certificate
1997-12-31
2001-03-06
Grant, William (Department: 2786)
Data processing: generic control systems or specific application
Specific application, apparatus or process
Product assembly or manufacturing
C700S003000, C709S211000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06198981
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a control apparatus for controlling, for example, equipment for manufacturing semiconductor devices.
In the photolithography process in the manufacture of semiconductor devices, after the photoresist coating process of forming a photoresist film on the surface of a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter, referred to as a wafer) and the exposure process of exposing the resist-coated wafer have been carried out, the development process of developing the exposed wafer is performed. The photoresist coating process and the development process are carried out according to a specific sequence in a complex processing system constructed by various processing units, as disclosed in, for example, Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKOKU Publication No. 2-30194.
In sequence control in such a system, software bugs or hardware problems can cause the system to go down. Should this happen, it is necessary to investigate the causes of the malfunction. Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 5-324053 has disclosed the technique for causing a data collector to constantly acquire the data from a sequence controller and, when a failure has occurred in an automatic machine, displaying the acquired data covering a certain point in time to the time when the failure occurred on a data history display. This enables the operator to learn the cause of the malfunction from the displayed acquired data.
In ordinary sequence control, the volume of the acquired data is often enormous. In a complex processing system including the aforementioned processing units, various types of control are performed and therefore the volume of the acquired data is tremendous. Accordingly, it is very difficult to find out the cause of the malfunction from the displayed acquired data.
To overcome this problem, for example, Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 5-324053 has disclosed the technique for storing the normal data beforehand in the system and extracting the cause of the malfunction by comparing the normal data with the acquired data.
The volume of the normal data increases as the volume of the acquire data increases and therefore the former is often enormous. As a result, particularly in the case of the complex processing system, the following problem arises: storing such an enormous amount of normal data requires memory means with a tremendous memory capacity.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of the present invention is to provide a control apparatus capable of narrowing down the abnormal factors without increasing the memory capacity so much.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a control apparatus capable of letting the operator to know the abnormal factor no matter where it has occurred.
According to the present invention, there is provided a control apparatus comprising at least one slave controller for performing a specific control to a processing unit corresponding to the slave controller in a processing system, a master controller for supervising the slave controller, and a bus connected to the slave controller to the master controller, wherein the master controller includes a first storage section that stores the contents of the control of the master controller and the slave controller, a second storage section for storing the factors aborting the control of the master control section and the slave control section, and a display section for displaying the control-abort factors stored in the second storage section.
According to the present invention, there is a control apparatus comprising one or more slave controllers each for performing a specific control to the corresponding processing unit in a processing system, a master controller that supervises the slave controllers, and a bus that connects the slave controllers to the master controller, wherein the slave controllers each include holding means for temporarily holding the abort factor when the control of the slave controllers has been ended because of an abnormal factor, and the master control section includes first storage means for storing the contents of the control of the master controller and the slave controllers, reading means for reading the held abort factor when the abort factor has been held in the holding means at the start-up of the processing system, second storage means that stores the factors aborting the control of the master control section and the abort factor read by the reading means, and display means for displaying the control-abort factors stored in the second storage section.
With the present invention, because the factors aborting the control of the master control unit and the slave control units are stored and then displayed, the abnormal factors can be narrowed down from the stored contents of the control on the basis of the displayed abort factors. The narrowing down of the abnormal factors can be done by just storing the control-abort factors so the storage capacity need not be increased so much.
Additional object and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The object and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5432715 (1995-07-01), Shigematsu et al.
patent: 5495417 (1996-02-01), Fuduka et al.
patent: 5687085 (1997-11-01), Morimoto et al.
patent: 5754780 (1998-05-01), Asakawa et al.
patent: 5980591 (1999-11-01), Akimoto et al.
patent: 2-577747 (1996-11-01), None
Nakamura Tsuyoshi
Umeshima Atsushi
Grant William
Oblon & Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt P.C.
Rodriguez Paul
Tokyo Electron Limited
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