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Microchip Simulation Laboratory

Professors Eytan Barouch, Michael Yeung, Dan Cole
15 Saint Mary's Street, Rm122
Phone: 617.353.0433
Website: http://www.bu.edu/simulation

A main theme of the work done in the microchip simulation laboratory is to use simulation of physical processes to aid in improving the design and manufacturability of microelectronic related products. A key motivating factor here is that experimentation is generally very expensive. Consequently, if simulation exists that is sufficiently accurate, fast, and easy to use, then it can save considerable expense for developing technologies, improving existing ones, and making current technologies more manufacturable. The research in this lab focuses on several fronts, namely, to obtain the best physical description of the physical processes involved in the technology, to develop algorithms that are numerically accurate, robust, and fast, and to combine these aspects, with appropriate trade-offs, into simulation packages that aid in the overall process of microelectronic technology development and manufacturability. Much of the current research of this lab focuses on microlithography, butother work has also begun here on nanoelectronics, and even into more fundamental aspects involving the interaction and description of carrier transport and electromagnetic fields. The computational facilities in this lab includes (1) a SUN Ultra Enterprise 450 workstation with four processors, 4G of shared RAM, and 152 G hard-drive, (2) an ULTRA2 machine with dual processors and 2 G RAM, (3) three Alpha workstations, and (4) a cluster of Sparc workstations. In addition a growing increase of both internally and externally (commercial) programs are available for simulation testing and development purposes. Professors Cole, Barouch, and Yeung are working under various research grants from DARPA, AFOSR, CIPA, and IBM. They have had close interactions with a large number of the companies in microelectronics, including IBM, Intel, AMD, and LSI Logic.