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New KLA-Tencor Web-Based Recipe Management Service Enables Increased Productivity and Lower Cost of Ownership
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SAN JOSE, Calif., June 5, 2001 - KLA-Tencor Corp. (Nasdaq: KLAC) today introduced iRecipe™ -its new web-based recipe management service. iRecipe dramatically reduces the cost of creating and managing recipes, and improves tool productivity by moving these activities offline. With iRecipe, engineers can easily and quickly access existing recipes and associated information that reside on a central database from any personal computer that is connected to the fab intranet. By integrating iRecipe into their fab network, chipmakers can reduce their inspection and metrology tool cost of ownership, as well as improve their overall fab efficiency.

The number of complex process steps used to manufacture leading-edge integrated circuits (ICs) is continuing to increase, driving chipmakers to develop more inspection and metrology tool recipes, which are costly and time-consuming to produce. In order to keep up with the rapidly changing technology landscape and remain competitive in the semiconductor market, chipmakers need a highly flexible recipe management system that allows users to easily access and modify tool recipes to meet their ever-changing production requirements. At the same time, they need a highly reliable and secure networked solution that ensures that any changes made to the recipes are reflected across the entire networked tool set to minimize recipe errors that can result in wafer scrap and rework.

"With the frequent introduction of new IC designs and processes, and continual device shrinks, an increasing percentage of process excursions are arising due to unauthorized or unsynchronized recipe changes that can put wafers at risk," stated Robert Rubino, KLA-Tencor's group vice president and chief technical officer for software development. "iRecipe provides chipmakers with significant savings by reducing the risk of wafer rework and scrap resulting from poorly controlled recipes. It also lowers the cost of ownership of KLA-Tencor tools by reducing engineering burden and increasing tool productivity."

iRecipe provides recipe management services in compliance with Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International's (SEMI) E42 standard. It ties together all KLA-Tencor tools throughout a fab into a fully integrated recipe management system with a common web-based user interface that enables engineers to easily develop, edit, distribute and manage recipes right from their desktop. iRecipe can trace recipe changes to rapidly determine if the recipe or the process is the source of a yield problem. It also includes an extensive security system and editing service that ensures that changes made to recipes are synchronized to the iRecipe database, as well as across the tools in the fab.

"With iRecipe, recipes can be seamlessly transferred from one iRecipe server to another or from one fab to another," added Rubino. "This facilitates the transfer of new technologies from development fabs to production fabs. Also, by reducing the amount of time needed to develop costly new recipes, iRecipe enables engineers to devote more of their time to developing new processes that get their leading-edge products to market faster."

iRecipe will initially be available on KLA-Tencor's latest-generation patterned wafer inspection systems beginning in June 2001.

Visit KLA-Tencor's booth, #426, at SEMICON West 2001 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, July 16-18, to see a demonstration of iRecipe.

iRecipe is a trademark of KLA-Tencor.


About KLA-Tencor: KLA-Tencor is the world leader in yield management and process control solutions for semiconductor manufacturing and related industries. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., the company has sales and service offices around the world. An S&P 500 company, KLA-Tencor is traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol KLAC.

Contact:
Meggan Powers
Director Corporate Communications

 

 

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