First and foremost, I would like to thank all members of the Institute for
Microelectronics for the very good working atmosphere. I am very
grateful for the continuous support and encouragement by my advisor
Professor Siegfried
Selberherr. His decision to offer me a
doctoral position at his Institute has played an important role in my
professional carrier. I would also like to point out his financial support
to attain several exciting international conferences all over the world. Due
to his excellent contacts to the semiconductor industry he was able to
support me with an outstanding working environment. During the four years at
the Institute I enjoyed four generations of workstations which demonstrates
the ongoing hardware progress at the Institute.
I would like to thank the research laboratories of Siemens AG, Munich, for
granting me a scholarship. Without this support this work would
not have been realized.
I wish to thank Sheldon Aronowitz from LSI Logic Corp. for inviting me to work in his group. I greatly appreciated this opportunity to gain my knowledge in a team of excellent co-workers like Laique Khan, Paul Neary and Joeffrey Dong.
Special acknowledge to my sysadmin-mates Franz Fasching, Walter Tuppa,
Rudi Strasser and Rainer Sabelka for sharing many
system-administratorial work during the last years. Hans Kosina, Gerhard
Schrom and Heinrich Kirchauer thanks for proof-reading this work.
My sincere gratitude to Claus Fischer and Thomas Simlinger for supporting me during the development of PROMIS-NT.
Last but not least, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my family and Sonja's family for continuous support. On the very top of all those I owe more than can expressed is Sonja Koppensteiner for many hours of fruitful technical and non-technical discussions to shape my personal attitudes in many respects.