PLANNING WAFER ALLOCATION FOR CMOS PROCESS-DEVELOPMENT - A NONPARAMETRIC APPROACH

In this paper, we present techniques that can be used to answer the fo llowing two questions: 1) how many wafers need to be allocated per tre atment to detect a given difference in a device performance metric and 2) how can one determine if a given treatment significantly improved a performance metric? The approach presented here does not make any as sumptions regarding the shape of the distribution or the spatial depen dency structure for the within-wafer performance measurements and rema ins applicable for a variety of performance metrics, such as mean, var iance, and median. The analysis method can be used in decisions regard ing the appropriateness of allocating half or quarter wafer splits to a treatment. Furthermore, the approach allows us to evaluate and compa re within-wafer sampling strategies for comparing performance metrics from competing flows.