Reviews

Professor Chenming Hu, IEEE Fellow, University of California at Berkeley CTO TSMC

"I used a version of MicroTec simulator to introduce the students in my graduate devices course to device simulation. The students used it in a homework assignment and some of them use it again for their term papers. It was a good experience for the students. I will do the same again."

Dr. Constantin Bulucea, IEEE Fellow, National Semiconductor Corporation Santa Clara, California

"Simulators were created on the idea that technologists used them routinely, inasmuch as they had been using slide rules and calculators before. Unfortunately, with the mounting complexity of TCAD tools, semiconductor simulation became a specialty in itself, "TCAD engineering"... which made practicing technologists dependent and unsafe.
Resenting the dependency idea, I was looking for a simple and robust 2-D simulator. When I discovered Microtec, it instantly become my default tool in numerical rendering of new process and device architectures.
Microtec has all the qualities of a single-developer product - consistency, efficiency, and ease of use in the first place. Based on classical semiconductor equations, and limiting modeling of material properties to simple expressions, device and process developers should expect good first-order predictions of their silicon lots.
While Microtec is ideally suited for pre-silicon trend predictions, it does not exclude the use of more complex simulation or statistical tools for experiments-based, computer-aided process optimization."

Herman K. Gummel, the Pioneer of Semiconductor Device Modeling

"The SiMOS simulator is a remarkable PC tool that provides means for the efficient simulation of MOS devices. In conjunction with the excellent graphics facilities that are part of the MicroTec suite, and with the user's manual that describes algorithms and physical models, it is an invaluable instructional tool and a great intuition builder."

Steve Ulbrich, Integrated Technical Designs, Anaheim, California

"I have used MicroTec to develop 20v CMOS and 7A Bipolar devices. The CMOS is an LDD structure, precursor to DMOS. Once calibrated for the ionization coefficient, I obtained a good match between simulation and measurement. However, I use these type of tools to aid understanding and to indicate trends, i.e. derivatives. Without further calibration, I developed the high voltage PMOS device. I like the easy to use interface and its easy to do "what if" scenarios. MicroTec is a great engine for this type of work. I have not once had a convergence problem. The art is in applying its capability to the various portions of device design and not expect 1 simulation set to give all the answers."

Professor Bruce Darling, University of Washington, Seattle

"MicroTec provides most of the features of a full-size workstation-based process and device simulator in a small footprint PC application. The program is easy to use and the numerical stability is outstanding. It runs swiftly and presents the user with clean graphical output of just the elements one is looking for. It is an excellent tool for classroom use, since it allows new users to concentrate on the physics without becoming mired in the software intricacies of a large workstation application. MicroTec offers exceptional functionality for its price, and it runs on a PC!"

Professor Michael Shur, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

"MicroTec is a very useful and easy-to-use program that could serve as an excellent instruction aid for courses in semiconductor device physics at both undergraduate and graduate levels."