Mf Software

MF software is the control layer for the mainframe robot — the vacuum-side wafer-transfer robot that moves wafers between load locks, the cluster-tool's central chamber, and the process chambers themselves. Where FI software manages the atmospheric side of a tool, MF software manages everything behind the slit valves, and the two talk to each other to hand a wafer across that atmosphere-to-vacuum boundary without ever both reaching for it at once.

Wafer ready at load lock
FI software signals handoff available
MF software scheduling loopRuns continuously while chambers are processing
Chamber status poll
Which chambers are free, which are mid-recipe
Transfer scheduling
Pick next move to maximize chamber utilization
Slit-valve + vacuum robot command
Open valve, move arm, verify placement
↻ next wafer
Chamber loaded
Recipe start triggered

Scheduling, not motion, is where MF software earns its keep. A cluster tool might have four or five process chambers sharing one vacuum robot, and if that robot idles waiting on the wrong chamber or loads wafers in a suboptimal order, the whole tool's throughput drops even though every individual chamber is running at full rate. MF software's scheduler is constantly solving a small real-time optimization problem — which chamber to feed next — based on live chamber-busy status, not a fixed round-robin sequence.

MF Software — Scheduling the Vacuum Robot one robot, several chambers, a continuous scheduling decision MF robot Chamber A processing Chamber B free — next pick Chamber C processing Chamber D idle next move goes to chamber B — the only one that's actually free right now

It also owns the boundary handshake with FI software. The handoff at the load lock has to be sequenced exactly: FI software places a wafer, closes the atmosphere-side door, signals ready; MF software pumps the load lock to vacuum, opens the vacuum-side slit valve, and only then does its robot reach in. Either side acting out of turn means a slit valve opening into the wrong pressure regime, which is a maintenance event, not just a scheduling miss.

MF software is what makes a multi-chamber cluster tool behave like one coordinated system instead of four process chambers that happen to share a robot — and the quality of its scheduling decisions shows up directly in the tool's wafers-per-hour number.

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