As an example for the integration of a conventional simulator into the VISTA TCAD framework, the capacitance simulator VLSICAP is presented. The program system VLSICAP has been developed to support the analysis of interconnect and junction capacitances in very large scale integrated (VLSI) circuits in two dimensions. It was originally written by F. Straker [Stra86][Stra85] and further extended by K.P. Traar [Traa90a].
The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the PAI's ability to support the integration of existing simulators. Therefore no new concepts regarding device simulation in general or the capacitance simulator VLSICAP in particular are presented. The first section gives a brief overview of the theory of capacitance calculation in general, while the following sections discuss the data level and task level integration of VLSICAP into VISTA.