When designing a new process flow for technology modeling,
often several trials have to be made before a process completely
runs without any user interference. This is especially true when
using different simulation tools together, as they are usually
very intolerant with respect to even the slightest flaws in their input
data. Critical settings have to be chosen carefully to generate a
stable configuration capable of modeling a process for a wide variety of
parameter settings
.
From the simulation environment point of view, some helpful support can be provided to ease the pains of these design stages. Keeping all temporary simulation results available for back-stepping purposes aims at efficiently supporting the early stages of TCAD process design; see Section 7.2 for details. Single-step operation, stop-and-resume operation, and simple reworking further add in exploring possible solutions.