Computational Electronics for the 21st Century: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future

The author's career has coincided with the development of numerical simulation into an essential component of semiconductor device technology research and development. We now have a sophisticated suite of simulation capabilities along with new challenges for 21st Century electronics. This talk presents a short history of the field and a description of the current state of the art, but it concentrates on lessons learned and thoughts about how computational electronics can continue to contribute effectively to the development of new electronic device technologies. The author will argue that electronics is changing, and that computational electronics can play a key role in this evolution. In addition to supporting the continuing development of a small suite of physically detailed / first principles tools, he will argue for more emphasis on analytically compact, strongly physical, conceptual models. Such models help guide the development of physically detailed models, connect to circuit and application designers, and advance device science itself.