Fractilia’s FAME 300 Adopted in Production by Top-5 Semiconductor Manufacturer

Fractilia, the industry leader in high-accuracy stochastics metrology and control, today announced that its FAME 300™ system has been adopted for production use by a top-five semiconductor device maker, marking the first time an in-line stochastics control solution has been fully integrated into a modern manufacturing environment.

Fractilia confirmed that FAME 300 has been deployed as a fully automated, fully host-integrated in-line metrology system within an advanced-node manufacturing line. The customer is now using Fractilia’s Stochastics Line Monitor™ on over 200 metrology steps to generate automated statistical process control (SPC) charts, drive real-time lot dispositioning and publish results to hundreds of engineers across multiple functional groups, all without human intervention.

Unlike traditional offline stochastics measurements, which provide delayed diagnostic insight, in-line stochastics control enables real-time, automated production decisions that directly impact yield in advanced-node manufacturing.

This production milestone demonstrates that stochastics, long considered primarily an R&D problem, has now become a central production issue at advanced nodes. This is because the industry is confronting what Fractilia describes as the “stochastics gap.” That’s the growing disconnect between what can be patterned in development and what can be manufactured at scale with acceptable yield.

By embedding Fractilia’s FILM™-based measurements into factory standard automation systems, the customer has validated the necessity of real-time stochastics measurements such as linewidth roughness (LWR), line edge roughness (LER) and local critical dimension uniformity (LCDU) for process control at advanced nodes.

“This deployment represents a major step forward for the semiconductor industry,” said Chris Mack, CTO, Fractilia. “For the first time, fabs are able to use accurate stochastic measurements to make automated, real-time production decisions. Our customer’s ability to integrate FAME 300 directly into their host system demonstrates that in-line stochastics control is not just possible; it is now a practical and essential element of advanced-node manufacturing.”

Stochastics: Now the Dominant Source of Patterning Error

As feature sizes shrink and EUV and high-NA EUV lithography introduce dramatically higher fundamental photon and molecular randomness, stochastic variability now consumes more than half of the patterning error budget at advanced nodes. Historically, these effects were small compared to feature sizes; today they are yield-critical and put multi-billion-dollar manufacturing investments at risk.

Manufacturers have increasingly recognized that traditional CD-SEM measurements and deterministic process control methods are insufficient to capture the randomness inherent in advanced patterning. Fractilia’s Stochastics Line Monitor™ is emerging as the next major inflection point, analogous to earlier transitions to defectivity and overlay line monitoring which occurred in the 1990s.

FAME 300 enables this by combining Fractilia’s patented FILM™ technology with full automation and host/MES connectivity, providing fabs with:

• Accurate, unbiased stochastics measurements using images from production CD-SEMs and other SEM tools
• Automated ingestion into the fab’s MES, SPC and other systems
• Real-time lot dispositioning for yield-risk mitigation
• High-throughput, fully unattended data flows with the capacity to measure all SEM images generated from an entire fab

Ease of Integration and Broader Metrology Utility

The customer’s IT organization noted that integration of FAME 300 into its host system was “much easier than expected,” requiring significantly less engineering effort than typical fab-automation projects.

In addition to stochastic metrics, the customer has also begun using Fractilia measurements for critical CD and distance-metric metrology for selected layers, which demonstrates the breadth of the FILM™ engine beyond stochastic effects. Fractilia’s measurements are being increasingly relied upon for key dimensional metrics, reinforcing the system’s value across multiple process modules.

The Need for Stochastics Control

Across the industry, multiple device makers have recently increased their use of Fractilia’s products in both R&D and production contexts. Numerous organizations partner with Fractilia to publish papers on the criticality of stochastics at advanced nodes. Fractilia will present four papers with three different customers at the SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning conference from February 22-26, 2026, in San Jose, CA.

About Fractilia

Fractilia is the world leader in stochastics metrology and control solutions for advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Its patented FILM™ technology provides highly accurate and precise measurements of stochastics—the single largest source of patterning errors at advanced nodes—helping customers improve yield, performance, and productivity. Fractilia’s solutions include MetroLER™ for process development and engineering analysis, and the FAME™ family of products for fab ramp and production applications. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Fractilia holds more than 20 issued patents. For more information, visit www.fractilia.com.

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