Scalable Iterative Solvers Applied to 3D Parallel Simulation of Advanced Semiconductor Devices

We have studied the performance of a preconditioned iterative solver to speed up a 3D semiconductor device simulator. Since 3D simulations necessitate large computing resources, the choice of algorithms and their parameters become of utmost importance. This code uses a density gradient drift‐diffusion semiconductor transport model based on the finite element method which is one of the most general and complex discretisation techniques. It has been implemented for a distributed memory multiprocessor environment using the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library. We have applied this simulator to a 67 nm effective gate length Si MOSFET.