Iterative versus direct parallel substructuring methods in semiconductor device modelling

摘要

The numerical simulation of semiconductor devices is extremely demanding in term of computational time because it involves complex embedded numerical schemes. At the kernel of these schemes is the solution of very ill-conditioned large linear systems. In this paper, we present the various ingredients of some hybrid iterative schemes that play a central role in the robustness of these solvers when they are embedded in other numerical procedures. On a set of two-dimensional unstructured mixed finite element problems representative of semiconductor simulation, we perform a fair and detailed comparison between parallel iterative and direct linear solution techniques. We show that iterative solvers can be robust enough to solve the very challenging linear systems that arise in those simulations. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.