Large Scale Integration) applications were 

 viewed as being able to justify design costs. 

 The CAD (Computer-Aided Design) revolution 

 changed this situation by empowering a vastly 

 increased number of creative people with the 

 ability to design chips at low economic risk. 

 The CAD revolution also provided first pass suc- 

 cess in most cases on new designs. 



A current view, widely held, is that a similar rev- 

 olution using the same general approach can rev- 

 olutionize manufacturing. The concept is to 

 build a highly flexible computer controlled man- 

 ufacturing facility; a "Programmable Factory." 

 In parallel with this factory, a suite of simulation 

 tools would be constructed; a "Virtual Factory" 

 capable of emulating all functions of the real 

 factory. Both of these facilities would be con- 

 trolled and integrated through a Manufacturing 

 Automation Framework (MAF). The compari- 

 son of actual results from the real factory with 

 predicted results from the Virtual Factory pro- 

 vides a means for improving models. 



One example of work in progress is ongoing at 

 Stanford University supported by ARPA. Here, 

 the overall aim is to implement a basic version 

 of these constituents in a working IC (Integrated 

 Circuit) facility and to demonstrate the power of 

 this approach in developing and applying new 

 technologies. Much of the work in the first two 

 years of this project has focused on developing 

 specific software tools needed for the Virtual 

 Factory such as simulators and design tools; 

 developing the software needed for the 

 Automation Framework including information 



storage methods and frameworks for linking 

 software tools; and putting into place the hard- 

 ware and software tools needed to connect the 

 Virtual Factory to the Programmable Factory. 



Recent accomplishments include an integrated 

 demonstration of the concept including opera- 

 tional prototypes of many of these tools. More 

 than 20 different projects in the research pro- 

 gram were integrated together to show the power 

 of connecting the Virtual and Real Factories to 

 an audience of more than 100 people from 

 industry, government and universities. Scalable 

 algorithms, developed on a workstation, were 

 used to demonstrate an extremely large three- 

 dimensional device simulation; a major new 

 software tool, SPEEDIE, which simulates thin 

 film etching and deposition steps in IC manufac- 

 turing, has been released to industry; and a new 

 multiprocessing reactor designed to perform 

 multiple manufacturing steps in a single machine 

 is being used to test new manufacturing concepts 

 in the real factory. 



SPONSORING AGENCIES AND 

 ORGANIZATIONS 



ARPA 



Digital Equipment Corporation 



Semiconductor Research Corporation 



Stanford Center for Integrated Systems industrial 



sponsors 

 Texas Instruments 



PERFORMING ORGANIZATIONS 



Stanford University 



153 



