Making a PROPHET

The PROPHET simulator is a software system for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) in time and 1, 2 or 3 space dimensions. When equipped with appropriate modules, it can be configured as a process simulator or a device simulator, with application to modeling semiconductor fabrication processes and transistor behavior. The simulator is designed with three main goals: efficiency, geometric flexibility, equation extensibility. The first two distinguish it from canned packages such as Mathematica, which do not easily allow the use of arbitrary shapes or grids and are not tuned to solve systems with 10 sup 5 and 10 sup 6 unknowns. The third distinguishes it from previous application-specific simulators for semiconductor problems, such as PISCES or SUPREM-4. The simulator has been used in production for several years to predict semiconductor manufacturing processes.