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Accelerated redistancing for level set-based process simulations with the fast iterative method

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Abstract

The finite iterative method is compared to an industry-hardened fast marching method for accelerating the redistancing step essential for Level Set-based process simulations in the area of technology computer-aided design. We discuss our implementation of the finite iterative method and depict extensions to improve the method for process simulations, in particular regarding stability. Contrary to previously published work, we investigate real-world structures with varying resolutions, originating from the area of process simulation. The serial execution performance as well as error norms are used to compare our approach with an industry-hardened fast marching method implementation. Parallel scalability is discussed based on a shared-memory OpenMP implementation. We show that our approach of the finite iterative method is an excellent candidate for accelerating Level Set-based process simulations, as it offers considerable performance gains both in serial and parallel execution mode, albeit being inferior with respect to accuracy.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) through the Grant P23296. The authors thank Florian Dang from the Université de Versailles, France for valuable discussions concerning the FIM.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Microelectronics, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Josef Weinbub

  2. Silvaco Europe Ltd., St Ives, Cambridge, UK

    Andreas Hössinger

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  1. Josef Weinbub
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  2. Andreas Hössinger
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Correspondence to Josef Weinbub.

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Weinbub, J., Hössinger, A. Accelerated redistancing for level set-based process simulations with the fast iterative method. J Comput Electron 13, 877–884 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10825-014-0604-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10825-014-0604-x

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