3.1 Conventional TCAD

TCAD environments available so far [55,36,96,82] are more or less sophisticated graphical user interfaces dedicated to a closed set of simulation tools. These environments are highly specialized to the simulation of a sequential flow of dedicated simulation tools. In other words, they support a TCAD user in administering the input information which is needed to simulate a certain technology or device, using simulation tools which are strongly related to the specific TCAD environment. To some extent these environments also provide some sort of parameterization which allows for the introduction of symbolic parameters into the simulation flows.

All existing TCAD systems lack intrinsic abstraction mechanisms that enable a user to structure a TCAD problem in a natural way. Abstraction in this context means to hide most of the details and expose the essentials, which typically are a couple of parameters of particular interest. This abstraction is so vital for productive TCAD because typical simulation flows include dozens of parameters and thus their management can be cumbersome.