MOST READERS are probably reading only the first few names listed in an acknowledgment, if it is read at all. I hope to improve this situation by using photographs, since they are visually much more captive. In the course of working at the Institute of Microelectronics many people were important to me--most of them equally. To overcome the problem of choosing a specific order they will be listed here almost chronologically.
GERHARD SCHROM was the one who introduced me to the institute during a programming practicum. His friendly and very competent kind was beside the interesting working field offered by the institute the main motivation to also begin my master thesis at the institute a few years later.
Prof. TIBOR GRASSER soon amazed me with his immense skills regarding software architecture. Without his support my master thesis and moreover this text would not be the same. He also introduced me into the joy of having chinese food on a daily basis, and life would have been a bit poorer without his sarcastic and amusing remarks.
Prof. SIEGFRIED SELBERHERR allowed me to start my dissertation at the institute. His generous support with computational infrastructure, his excellent connections to strong industrial partners and the competent advice concerning my work were key for doing my research.
Prof. HANS KOSINA was supervisor of my master thesis and was kind enough to also take care of supervising my dissertation work. His strong theoretical background combined with the attribute of patiently answering even the most naive questions over and over again cannot be emphasized strongly enough.
MARTIN ROTTINGER shared the room with me in the beginning and was therefore responsible for introducing me into the higher arts of the Emacs text editor and the LATEX text processing and typesetting system. His OpenSource evangelism had a severe impact on my attitude towards software engineering.
ANDREAS GEHRING became my room mate afterwards and his friendly and kind nature definitely enriched the working atmosphere. Our joined trips to some conferences, in one case also together with our female partners, left many nice memories.
SERGEY SMIRNOV joined our room recently and I already have to thank him for the many stimulating discussions concerning my thesis. As Russia being his home, the insight into some cultural differences and country dependent habits were very interesting.
CHRISTIAN TROGER spent endless hours on improving the infrastructure of our excellently maintained heterogenous computer network. His impulses for skiing weekends, climbing tours and inline skating must also be mentioned.
CLAUS FISCHER was one of the initial authors of MINIMOS-NT, the device simulator which was used and improved in this text. He was also a member of the development group at Intel and therefore managed several fruitful telephone meetings during the cooperation.
Finally I want to express my gratitude to Prof. ERICH GORNIK for participating in the examination committee.
This work has generously been supported by the Christian Doppler Gesellschaft,
Vienna, Austria and Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, USA.