Predicting Silicon Behavior Years Before Test Wafers

Semiconductor engineers have known for decades that serial fabrication runs of test wafers is an inefficient way to bring up new processes and technologies. Modern deep submicron nodes have only reinforced this observation. It now costs several years and tens of billions of dollars just to build a fab. Every test wafer run takes months and costs millions. Finding problems after a run, figuring out the causes, devising fixes, and waiting for the next set of wafers to confirm the results is just n