MAL-01: Accelerated TCAD Process

Brief description of the organization

MicroAlchemy is a semiconductor manufacturing company that is also distributing electronic design automation (EDA/CAD) tools. We are a manufacturing company that is focused on chip prototyping and open source tooling.


Problem area

Students will explore techniques to accelerate TCAD device or process simulation. Acceleration can be done via GPU/NPU/other distributed techniques. TCAD aims to simulate the physical processes underlying devices as they operate or as they are manufactured in a foundry.


Main objectives

The main objective is to implement and accelerate a variety of PDEs or ODEs on available commodity hardware. A further exploration of correlating simulation results with actual devices that we fabricate can also be done.


Scope of work

A short literature review can be done, or resources can be directly provided. Software development/source code of unaccelerated vs accelerated simulators on a variety of hardware with different optimization techniques. Simulation plots, graphs or other 2D/3D visualizations of accurate simulation results are to be provided.


Deliverables

  • Report
  • Presentation

Team meeting frequency

Weekly


Skills and training required

  • Research and analytical skills
  • Presentation skills.
  • Software planning
  • Architecture and design skills.
  • Mathematical reasoning skills.

Resources required

Potentially GPU


NDA or a commercialization agreement for this project?

Yes