The integrated TCAD systems listed in the introduction can be further characterized according to the architectural criteria mentioned in Section 2.1. Such a classification is very difficult and not always fair, as some of the systems may be of greater practical utility than others, while failing to meet the architectural criteria as they exhibit system architectures that have grown over many years, without major redesign. Each of the systems listed (especially the smaller ones) emphasize a certain aspect of TCAD, like statistical simulation, compact model generation, full process simulation, or a strong link to layout and horizontal design, and neglect others. It is even more difficult to characterize these systems as there are just very few publications available which contain information about the software structure and about internal details of the systems.
Table 2.2 gives an overview of the data level, task level, and presentation level components of the integrated TCAD systems which have been presented in Section 1.2.
Table 2.1: List of integrated TCAD systems and components