Terminology

``The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods, or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general, president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social schizophrenia in mass genocide.''
(From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology Association, in Rome)

Terms which are not explained here are described in the text and may be found by looking them up in the index at page .

Application Engineer
An engineer designing and implementing TCAD tools (simulators) to be integrated into a TCAD framework (see [Hala94]).

Attribute
A single value defined on any other geometric or attribute object, or a set of values defined on a grid representing a distributed quantity like a doping concentration or an electric field. Attributes need not necessarily have a numerical data type, and may also consist of more than one data value per set. Thus an attribute may even represent (spatial) tensor functions.

Boundary
In data level terms, a physical geometrical object referencing points, lines or faces for one-, two- or three-dimensional geometries, respectively.

Build Process
The process of generating, compiling, and linking a whole software system either totally from scratch or from partly prebuilt sources, thus updating the software project's targets.

Class
A class is an aggregate containing members and methods for implementing the programming paradigms of data and function encapsulation in object-oriented programming languages.

Class Tree
This is the tree of classes obtained by inheritance beginning from the super class as the root of the class tree. Each node in the tree represents a class with classes inheriting information from their respective parent node.

Configuration
A set of commands, compiler options and preprocessor defines dependent on a specific machine architecture, or software project options stored in a single data set or file. CASE tools supporting the build process of a software system are often referred to as ``configuration management'' tools ([Feld79]).

Development Framework
A framework which provides - besides the ability of integrating existing simulators - additional features, mechanisms, libraries, and tools for developing new framework-compliant simulators to be integrated into the framework.

Direct Integration
A tool integration method by which the input and output source code parts of the tool are substituted by (or augmented with) function calls to the data level procedural interface for directly reading and writing framework compliant data. Thus the tool becomes a native framework tool.

Directive
Regarding TCAD tools, a statement or command in an input deck specifying options to the tool through keys.

Domain
In VLSICAP terms, an equivalent to a PIF segment. This is a region of interest on which VLSICAP solves the LAPLACE or POISSON equation.

Edge
In data level terms, a geometrical object referencing exactly two different points. Note that the order in which the points are referenced implies an orientation of the edge. Note that the edge definition is free from ambiguities, as opposed to the line definition.

Face
In data level terms, a geometrical object referencing at least three edges or lines. Note that the orientation of the referenced edges or lines implies an orientation of the line. Numerous ambiguities may arise in a face definition.

Form Functions
In finite element theory terms, the functions defined on a unity finite element used to obtain function values inside the element when only knowing the values on the element nodes. These form functions can be linear for two nodes per edge (e.g. a TRI3 element), quadratic for three nodes per edge (e.g. a TRI6 element), etc.

Framework
An infrastructure supporting the use of and linking together existing simulators in order to achieve a multiplication effect in overall functionality.

Framework Engineer
An engineer designing and implementing framework components of a TCAD framework (see [Hala94]).

Geometry
In data level terms, an object referencing all physical and logical geometrical objects of a TCAD structure, thus describing the spatial components this structure consists of.

Grid
A set of points together forming a spatial structure which is able to establish relationships between these points. Grids are used to carry attributes on their points or relational elements representing distributed quantities, thus being one of the most important data structures occurring inside a TCAD framework.

Inheritance
Members and methods of a class are passed on to other classes, if other classes declare this class as their parent class. Thus a class hierarchy (an inheritance tree) arises.

Input Deck
A TCAD tool control file, where commands and options regarding the tool run are stored in directives and keys.

Instance
An object is called an instance of a particular class. While the class just declares its members and methods, the object defines (allocates) the physical memory needed to represent the class.

Integration Framework
A framework just linking simulators of the current generation together without providing features for development of new framework-compliant tools.

Interpolation
The process of obtaining attribute values on arbitrary points derived from the values on the grid the attribute is originally defined on. In TCAD frameworks this term often refers to transferring an attribute defined on a grid to another grid with presumably disjoint grid points and presumably different structure.

Key
A name-value pair specifying options to a directive of an input deck of a simulator.

Line
In data level terms, a geometrical object referencing at least two points. Note that the order in which the points are referenced implies an orientation of the line. Ambiguities may arise when line segments intersect and points are referenced more than once (especially if the first and the last point reference are the same, the line is closed thus unintentionally representing a polygon) implying the conception of a closed polygon.

Member
A single data item contained in a class (i.e. class member).

Message
Invoking a method on an object is also called sending a message to an object.

Method
This is a function defined on (i.e. belonging to, working on an instance of) a specific class.

Object
The instance of a class, identified uniquely through an object handle.

Parent Class
The class from which members and methods are inherited.

Point
In data level terms, a tuple of one, two or three real values representing the cartesian point coordinates in one-, two-, or three-dimensional space, respectively. Note that point values must have spatial units, and transformations are applied with both multiplicative and translative components.

Point Location
In this text, the process of finding the grid element of an unstructured grid where a given point is located in. Without a special search structure this is an effort of time, given grid elements. Using a hierarchical grid, a search-directed acyclic graph or a balanced -ary tree as a search structure, this effort is reduced to time.

Repository
The current copy of a software project source tree including a revision history such that previous versions of the project can be reconstructed automatically if need be.

Revision
A certain status of a software project or an individual file usually identified by a revision tag or number, e.g. release-1-1 or patch-1-0+2.

Segment
In data level terms, a physical geometrical object referencing lines, faces, or solids for one-, two-, or three-dimensional geometries respectively.

Software Process
The total set of software engineering activities necessary to develop and maintain software products.

Software Process Technology
The methods, formalisms, and tools for supporting the software process.

Solid
In data level terms, a geometrical object referencing at least four faces. The orientation of the faces implies an orientation of the solid. Numerous ambiguities may arise in a solid definition.

Star-shaped Polygon
According to [Prep85], a simple polygon is star-shaped if there exists a point not external to such that for all points of the line segment lies entirely within .

Template Source File
A file containing ``placeholders'' which are to be substituted during a code generation process with UNFUG.

Tensor Product Grid
A grid whose points result from the tensor product of its axis vectors carrying tick values. In the special case of orthonormal grid axis vectors (resulting in a hypercube containing the grid points) the grid is called orthoProduct grid (hence the orthoProduct PIF construct name).

Tuple
A list of variables or values belonging together, representing a semantical unit to be used elsewhere. In UNFUG, a named tuple contained in a tuple file can be referenced from template source files to repeatedly associate the tuple variables with their corresponding values in a code generation loop.

Tuple File
A file holding named tuples to be used by UNFUG when referenced from a template source file.

Unstructured Grid
As opposed to a tensor product grid, this grid is composed of grid elements of irregular shape which fit together forming the complete grid.

Wrapping
A tool integration method which uses data front and back end converters to convert the tool's native data formats to data level compliant data structures and vice versa. This integration method has the advantage that the tool source code need not be available, since no changes in the tool code itself are necessary.