Vistara Platform

Vistara

Vistara^™ is a modular platform architected on three pillars: flexibility, intelligence and sustainability.  Vistara allows chipmakers to deploy their most complex recipes on a single platform, reduce their operating costs, accelerate time to money, and advance their sustainability initiatives.

The highly flexible Vistara is able to use a wide-variety of chamber types, sizes and configurations from Applied and even its partners. It can be configured with four or six wafer batch load ports and from as few as four to as many as 12 process chambers. Vistara accepts both smaller chambers used in processes like atomic layer deposition and chemical vapor deposition as well as larger chambers used in processes such as epitaxy and etching. Applied and its customers can combine these chambers to develop IMS^™ (Integrated Materials Solution^®)  recipes whereby a number of sequential wafer manufacturing process steps are completed in the same system, under vacuum.

Vistara systems are configured with thousands of sensors that feed massive, real-time data to Applied’s AI^x™ software platform which offers applications spanning R&D, process transfer and ramp, and high-volume manufacturing. Actionable data from thousands of process variables enables engineers to use the power of machine learning and AI to accelerate recipes that result in the best chip performance and power and widest process windows. Intelligence is incorporated throughout the platform including in the factory interface module where load locks are intelligently controlled to optimize pump and vent times, helping chipmakers reduce particles and defects to maximize yields. Platform robots are automatically calibrated to reduce start-up times by as much as 75 percent. In production, Vistara continuously monitors and calibrates its components to minimize manual intervention, maximize uptime and predict maintenance needs.

The increase in semiconductor process complexity and steps adds to the energy and materials needed to produce each wafer. Vistara is the first platform purpose-built to advance Applied’s “3x30” initiative to achieve 30-percent reductions in equivalent energy use, the impact of chemical use, and cleanroom floorspace requirements, all by 2030. Engineers optimized the way the platform uses energy-intensive sub-fab components including pumps, heat exchangers and chillers and redesigned the Vistara’s gas panels. These improvements lower platform energy consumption by as much as 35 percent compared to previous platforms, helping chipmakers reduce their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Vistara also reduces the cleanroom footprint of a system by as much as 30 percent.