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4.1 Heterogeneous Process Simulation Tools

Among the components shown in Figure 4.1, process simulation plays an outstanding role with respect to tool integration for the large variety of available tools on the one hand and for the need of arbitrarily changing the order in which tools are invoked on the other hand. Moreover, whereas device simulation, device characterizationgif, and circuit simulation transform their respective inputs to outputs of entirely different domains, process simulation is domain-invariant inasmuch as process simulation tools produce output that again serves as input for other process simulation toolsgif. More precisely, a device simulator reads a model of the wafer structure and writes numerical values for electrical quantities; a diffusion simulator reads a wafer model and writes a wafer model.





Christoph Pichler
Thu Mar 13 14:30:47 MET 1997