3.2 The Historical Perspective

As discussed in TCAD is meanwhile a widespread area with numerous topics. As also pointed out, several simulation tools are involved in the simulation of semiconductor processes and their devices. Therefore, the integration of these tools is an important issue. Hence at the beginning of the 90's the VISTA project [28,29,26] was initiated which was targeted to meet the demands of end users of TCAD tools as well as the demands of the programmers of these tools. The idea was to create a common platform for developers of TCAD tools of all kinds, on the one hand, and to make their application as simple as possible for TCAD users, on the other hand. The Profile Interchange Format PIF was intended to serve the former purpose, while the VISTA TCAD Simulation Environment served the latter.