In addition to simulating sequences of fabrication processes,
the support of large-scale simulation experiments plays another important
role in the TCAD domain. Simulation experiments are an indispensable
aid in the development of VLSI processes and devices for studying
the influence of parameter changes on the behavior of the fabricated
device. Typical tasks involve about five to ten
independent process parameters that are varied independently of each
other, leading to up to several hundred simulation experiments for
every system aspect under consideration.
Due to the high costs
of two-dimensional and three-dimensional simulation, the number of
simulator calls - the actual invocation of an executable to
numerically simulate a given fabrication process or device
characteristic - submitted to a workstation or other type of
computer needs to be made as small as possible, with automatically
enforcing the reuse of existing results where possible.
Tool control and data management necessary for such
experiments in a fashion suitable for application in an industrial
setting constitutes another core part of this work
(cf. Chapter 6).