Cypress Semiconductor
Actian Helps Cypress Semiconductor Maintain Blue-Chip Manufacturing Quality
Highlights
In the high-precision integrated circuit business, even the smallest production error can cost millions of dollars. Cypress Semiconductor Corporation relies on Ingres technology and services to keep its billion-dollar facilities operating at peak performance and speed even at massive scale. Maximum system uptime and accuracy help Cypress turn out perfect chips around the clock – and maintain its position as one of the world’s leading semiconductor makers.
Challenge
Cypress Semiconductor Corporation is a diversified supplier of high-performance, integrated circuits for network infrastructure and access equipment. The company’s manufacturing processes are intensive in both scale and precision, as its billion-dollar wafer fabrication plants conduct and log dozens of intricate manufacturing processes. If its machinery sits idle, the company has serious production problems. If the measurement specifications are off by a fraction of a millimeter, that’s trouble, too. “If you botch a wafer lot by executing a wrong step or mismanaging precision controls, you’ve literally destroyed a million dollars worth of wafers,” said Robert Price, DBA Manager at Cypress. “If any aspect of the system goes down, it will cost you.”
This need for reliable, consistent performance has led Cypress to demand absolute perfection from its databases and related services. Simply put, if its systems can’t keep pace with its requirements, the company’s productivity comes to a costly halt.
Solution
Cypress’ selection of a database for its manufacturing system came down to two solutions: Oracle or Ingres. “We chose Ingres,” said Price, “and it’s done the job.” Ingres Database, a leading open source database for business-critical applications, provides Cypress with a high-performance, highly scalable, expertly supported database that supports manufacturing processes that perform tens of thousands of hourly operations.
Cypress currently runs Ingres on Sun Solaris on 12 of its production servers. The solution’s fullfeatured, enterprise-class database enables industry-standard data access via JDBC, ODBC, and .NET, providing Cypress’s production systems with the data they need, when they need it to ensure precise production control and accurate manufacturing. Transaction journaling and point-intime recovery help Cypress quickly diagnose and address any problems that do arise.
On the rare occasions when the system does go down, Ingres Premium Service keep interruptions limited to minutes or hours rather than days. The service option gives Cypress one point of contact for service and a very tight relationship with its Ingres support team.
Results
Cypress’ selection of Ingres so many years ago has led to a long, fruitful relationship. The company has consistently reviewed its purchase and considered alternatives as revisions and new versions have been released, each time reaffirming its original choice of vendor because of the excellent performance, impeccable uptime statistics, and highly professional, rapid response support Ingres provides. “I can’t think of any other vendor that’s given us this kind of support,” said Price. “We’re totally happy with the database and the level of service we receive.”
“When we first signed up for Ingres Premium Service, our lives changed dramatically,”added Price. “The team is so responsive and we don’t have to log in somewhere before anyone talks to us. We just email or call our single point of contact and he’s all over any kind of issue we’re dealing with. If we’ve got a crash at three in the morning, I’ve got a number that we can call. Within a few minutes, somebody will be logged into our system, expertly examining things and getting it back in order. It’s very rare that we use the service, but when we do it’s invaluable.” Most of the time, the hardware (especially disks) or Cypress’ custom applications cause problems. “We need that layer of premium support, though, because our business is so dependent on these fabrication plants.”
The Ingres Premium Service team and Cypress’ DBAs conduct post-event, root-cause analysis to understand issues and prevent future failures. Both groups have specialized tools that allow them to quickly uncover root causes. “When something goes wrong, the post analysis teams come back with a root cause more than 90% of the time, which is very gratifying,” said Price.
“Every three years or so we renew our Ingres Database contract,” said Price. “We don’t like to go out longer than three years, although we should have in the past. We always renew and then we have to make up our minds if we want to pay for Ingres Premium Service. There’s hardly ever any resistance. The price is right. The service is so excellent. It’s an easy decision. It says a lot about the product and the people behind it.”