The IC TCAD Design Studio: A VIRTUAL IC FAB at EE-UCR

The UCR IC TCAD Design Studio was established recently benefited from two multi-million-dollar IC CAD software donations from the leading EDA vendor, the Synopsys. The TCAD Design Studio is powered by a full family of the industrial prevailing IC TCAD simulation tools and forms a Virtual IC Fab -- a computer-based integrated circuit fabrication facility, which can be used to conduct both advanced research & design in semiconductors and to educate our undergraduate/graduate EE students the comprehensive knowledge of modern IC fabrication, without being limited by the availability of extremely expensive physical IC manufacturing facilities. Use of virtual IC Fabs is becoming critical to the successes of development of state-of-the-art IC technologies below the 0.1um-node across the Microelectronics industry, which dramatically reduces the costs of development, typically in the scale of multi-billion dollars.

Synopsys TCAD Tool Set

SenTaurus	3D Process & Device simulator package
TAURUS-PROCESS	True 3D Process simulator that simulates all important fabrication steps used to manufacture semiconductor devices.
TAURUS-DEVICE	True 3D Device simulator that simulates electrical and thermal characteristics of any semiconductor device in 1, 2 or 3 dimensions.
TAURUS PEMI	Taurus PEMI is an addition to Taurus Device that allows for easy and flexible defining of new physical models and partial differential equations.
TAURUS TOPOGRAPHY	Taurus Topography simulates topography modification processes such as deposition, etch, spin on glass, reflow and chemical-mechanical polishing, in 2D or 3D cross-sections of arbitrarily shaped semiconductor devices composed of multiple layers.
TAURUS WORKBENCH	Taurus Workbench is a physical simulation tools that provides a natural, graphically based environment for designers to do the evaluation of their design alternatives, yield optimization and failure analysis.
TAURUS LITHOGRAPHY	Taurus Lithography performs complete photolithography process simulation, covering all aspects of stepper setup, resist processing and mask layout optimization to maximize the capabilities of the photolithographic process.
MEDICI	2D Device simulator that predicts the electrical characteristics of arbitrary two-dimensional structures under user specified operating conditions.
TSUPREM-4	2D Process simulator is the industry-standard 1D/2D process simulation tool that is widely used by semiconductor companies to optimize IC fabrication processes.
RAPHAEL	IC interconnect analysis simulator that is a collection of 2D and 3D field solvers and interfaces that provide the ability to obtain accurate interconnect models for different engineering needs.
TAURUS LAYOUT	IC layout interface
DFM Workbench	DFM WorkBench provides a simulation environment to obtain early SPICE models for circuit designers and statistical information for yield enhancement.
TMA VISUAL	1D/2D/3D simulation visual tool to visualize data from physical simulation software tools or other sources in one, two, and three dimensions. It is an interactive visualization tools for analyzing physical simulation results and manipulating the resulting plots to gain a new perspective.
AURORA	A complete semiconductor device characterization and parameter extraction system to measure device characteristics, extract circuit level model parameters from measured or simulated data, and analyze results graphically.
DAVINCI	Quasi-3D Device Simulator that predicts the electrical characteristics of arbitrary three-dimensional structures under user-specified operating conditions.