Breaking Barriers: Faster, Smarter, More Reliable Embedded Software
A lithography machine is a highly sophisticated piece of equipment used in semiconductor manufacturing to print extremely small patterns onto silicon wafers. These patterns form the circuits and transistors that make up microchips (the “brains” of modern electronics). The most advanced lithography machines today are EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) lithography systems, having 100,000+ components, capable of printing features as small as 2 nanometers, thousands of times thinner than a human hair.
These Lithography machines are the “printing presses” of the digital age. They enable the creation of chips that power everything from smartphones to AI supercomputers, making them one of the most important and strategically valuable technologies in the world today. The lithography machine is widely regarded as the most complex machine humanity has ever created. It sits at the heart of the semiconductor industry, powering the chips that drive today’s digital world.
Semiconductor fabs struggle with the astronomical cost, throughput bottlenecks, extreme technical precision, maintenance challenges, and geopolitical dependencies of lithography machines. These challenges directly determine how fast and efficiently the world can advance in semiconductors.
Lithography machine downtime is not just a technical hiccup; it is a multi-million-dollar bottleneck that cascades across production, quality, supply chain, and customer trust. Keeping uptime high (90–95%+) is one of the biggest challenges in fabs today. Each hour of downtime on an EUV lithography machine can cost a million dollars in direct and indirect losses.
Embedded software is the hidden brain that makes lithography machines even possible. Without it, the machine’s hardware (mirrors, lasers, wafer stages) cannot achieve the nanometer-scale precision required for chipmaking. Embedded software is the central nervous system of lithography machines, orchestrating motion, optics, lasers, safety, and calibration with nanosecond precision. It transforms impossibly complex physics into repeatable, reliable semiconductor manufacturing.
The bottlenecks of embedded software in lithography machines are real-time performance limits, extreme complexity, validation under edge conditions, slow qualification cycles, reliability demands, hardware-software co-evolution, and talent scarcity. These factors make embedded software the true rate-limiter in advancing semiconductor manufacturing. Speed and reliability are the twin pillars of profitable and precise semiconductor manufacturing. Embedded software acts as the machine’s brain orchestrating ultra-fast, nanometer-precise motions, optimising process parameters in real time, and ensuring fault-free operation, making high-speed, high-reliability production possible.
The embedded system software in lithography machines is immensely large, complex, and critical, often considered one of the most advanced software systems in the world, rivalling even space systems and aircraft avionics in terms of scale and precision. Developing any new feature on top of such a complex and critical existing software and delivering it on time, without any customer impact, is a big challenge.
With over two decades of expertise in embedded systems, Kishore Ranjan is transforming the way complex embedded software challenges are addressed. He has shifted the focus toward customer-specific needs, introducing ‘Customer Profile Testing,’ and pioneering the evolution of CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous deployment) in sophisticated embedded software delivery.
“Software delivery is not just a support function; it’s a core enabler of performance, reliability, and adaptability in lithography machines,” says Kishore. “By continuously updating embedded software, fabs can achieve higher throughput, lower defect rates, and faster adoption of advanced chip designs without disrupting production.”
Customer profile use cases and their rigorous qualification ensure that embedded software is tailored to the unique demands of each fab, safeguarding yield, enhancing throughput, and enabling reliable, high-precision semiconductor manufacturing. Before Kishore’s innovation, the industry relied on post-deployment validation software that was tested using generic scenarios on physical hardware, with customer-specific behaviours only validated after installation in production FABs. This caused integration issues to surface during critical ramp-up phases, resulting in production delays and emergency interventions. No systematic method existed to capture and replicate the diverse ways different semiconductor manufacturers interact with lithography systems.
“To proactively address these challenges, I developed the ‘Customer Profile’ test automation framework using Host Simulator,” Kishore explains. “This represents the first hardware-independent, customer-workflow emulation system, a capability that simply didn’t exist before.” Kishore’s methodology involved direct collaboration with semiconductor manufacturers’ support teams, analysis of historical escalation data, systematic review of SECS/SEMI standards and proprietary implementations, and categorization of customer behaviours into discrete profiles based on host architecture, job management, and operational patterns.
The innovation allowed realistic simulation of customer-specific workflows, replicating FAB-level host interactions ahead of deployment. Automated test cases replicating real-world operations are now embedded within the CI/CD pipeline, ensuring continuous validation against customer-specific workflows. Unlike traditional approaches, this framework provides pre-deployment validation, hardware-independent testing of thousands of scenarios, and continuous automated verification capabilities previously impossible in the industry. No comparable solution exists in semiconductor capital equipment that provides this level of customer-specific, hardware-independent validation at scale. This approach has become the new validation standard and is recognized as a breakthrough in qualifying complex embedded systems for mission-critical applications.
He concludes that “pioneering the Customer Profile test automation framework and harnessed CI/CD for complex lithography embedded software is transforming the validation and quality assurance in semiconductor manufacturing, which has enduring impact across the product lifecycle (average release time is reduced by 50%), enhancing software reliability (defectivity & downtime is reduced by ~25%), operational excellence, and business performance by addressing a critical, previously unmet technical challenge.”
By combining CI/CD with customer profile testing, he is showing how software can be delivered rapidly without compromising reliability. This approach, proven in semiconductor fabs, has the potential to transform any industry where complex hardware and software must work flawlessly, from aerospace to autonomous vehicles. It’s a new paradigm of precision, speed, and adaptability in the digital age
