The VISTA/SFC TCAD environment has been designed to support the
development of semiconductor processes and devices at different
stages of the design process.
It has evolved from early attempts
based on the VISTA TCAD framework [SFF
91] [Fas94] [Hal94]
to create a tool for controlling
and automating the sequential execution of semiconductor process
simulation tools [PS93a] [PS93b].
At the present stage of development, it comprises simulation tool
integration, process flow representation, process flow simulation,
and task-level automation for optimization, calibration, and
response-surface modeling tasks.
The remainder of this chapter gives an account of the objectives
and the overall architecture of the simulation environment.