Most of all I want to thank Prof. Selberherr for his support in many areas. The working environment, from the hardware to the various people at the Institute for Microelectronics, is more than fabulous. Most importantly I want to thank him for supporting my ideas from the beginning. I would like to thank Prof. Grasser for giving me the opportunity to work at the institute and for his support in various areas and for giving me the opportunity to learn a lot. I thank Prof. Purgathofer for his participation in the examining committee on such short notice.
My special thanks go to Philipp Schwaha who is one of the most wonderful and brilliant people I have ever worked with and from whom I have learned so much. I thank him for all the valuable discussions and for always believing in our work, for his company on all the travels around the world, and for making the hard days much easier. I also want to thank our former colleague Michael Spevak who introduced me to his world of mathematics and to his special view of different topics. Many parts of my own work were influenced by these two people, and so a deep gratitude will always be with you two. I want to express my appreciation to Andreas Hössinger who introduced me to the C++ world at the institute, which was the entry point to this work. Only chronologically last, I thank Franz Stimpfl for his support and fitting so well into the generic group at the institute.
My thanks also go to Hubert Enichlmayer and Rainer Minixhofer (AMS) for valuable insights, real world examples, and support from the company side; to Tatsumi-san and Kimura-san (Sony) for giving me the chance to work on the forefront of technology; to Peter Fleischmann, Steven Cea and Stefan Halama (Intel) for the great opportunity to work on the cutting edge and providing real examples; to Markus Schordan from the Institute for Computer Languages for valuable support in the field of compiler optimizations and insights into compiler technology.
I want to thank Werner Benger for introducing me to the fiber bundle concept and for being a great source of inspiration in so many areas, Yaakoub El-Khamra, and the rest of the group at the Center for Computation & Technology at Louisiana State University. Finally, I want to thank Joyce Visne for her never ending help and support.
And most importantly I want to thank my parents for giving me the chance to see and become who I am.