ALPS 2 Overview

ALPS 2 is a solution for inkless assembly which:

Accepts any wafer map format
Works with a wide range of equipment
Supports all production steps from wafer sort to die attach
Can be integrated with existing equipment/systems

Semiconductor manufacturers as well as prober and tester manufacturers, have defined their own internal standards for map formats. As a result, virtually every semiconductor manufacturer /prober/ tester combination provides a different wafer map output. Although there is now an industry standard wafer map format (SEMI E142), it will take several years for this proliferation of map formats to be replaced by the standard format.

First introduced in 1995, ALPS 2 is the industry’s leading wafer map data management and equipment integration software product for inkless assembly.

Assembly houses using ALPS can maximize production regardless of the format of the wafer map received because ALPS has >500 format converters in its library. The number of format converters in the ALPS library continues to grow month by month.

ALPS communicates with production equipment (such as inspection and die pick equipment) and human users. It performs the crucial process of automatically matching wafers to their maps as they are received at assembly from probe and notifies the appropriate personnel in case a map is missing or contains an error. ALPS also automatically identifies product that is not yet qualified for production through the inkless line and again notifies the appropriate personnel with the steps that must be taken to resolve the situation.

Information is collected from production equipment and human users, combined and stored in the ALPS relational database.
It then is made available on request by the human users
to support efficient, error-free and traceable production. Information processed includes wafer maps, sort lots, assembly lots, wafer-to-frame relationships, etc.