PEER Group's NexEDA™ is the first integrated software equipment connectivity product that fully complies with the latest 300mm and Interface A / EDA requirements. Additionally, because NexEDA leverages PEER Group's EIB™ ( Equipment Information Bridge) technology, it sets a benchmark for quality and performance in distributed equipment environments, in which the data streams from various active tools and equipment are interconnected and interactive, both at the operational event level and the end-user controller level.

Interface A & EDA on .NET

NexEDA is designed to meet the robustness and flexibility demands of mission-critical equipment software. It has been developed in Microsoft's .NET environment, which allows NexEDA to incorporate new functionality in .NET as it becomes available. Equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can take full advantage of .NET's programming features, which benchmarking indicates can reduce integration time for NexEDA by as much as 50%. OEMs can utilize the .NET functionality even if the equipment controller itself is not .NET. For example, NexEDA's use of inheritance allows OEMs to build better component-based control systems, improving reliability and reducing maintenance in a managed code environment. The .NET implementation also enables a number of other new features, including improved thread management, full object exposure, and multiple programming interfaces (C#, J#, VB#, C , COM).

NexEDA incorporates the full range of connectivity standards, including SECS/GEM (E4, E5, E30, E37), the full suite composing 300mm SEMI (E39, E40, E87, E90, E94, E116), and the latest releases on SEMI Interface A / EDA such as E120, 121, 125, 128, 132, and E134. EIB acts as a data server featuring multiple simultaneous connections utilizing multiple protocols such as SECS/GEM, XML/SOAP, DCOM, and .NET Remoting.

NexEDA is completely configurable in XML, supports both To-Tool and To-Host connections, provides run-time software libraries compatible for incorporation with any type of 300mm equipment, and has been certified and tested on Windows 2000, XP and NT.