The continuing advances in high performance computating have led to a fundamental paradigm shift in electronics research and development.
While time-consuming trial-and error experiments were standard practice up to several years ago, the wide-spread access to powerful computing facilities was limited, especially in industrial environments.
With the advent of cost-effective hardware platforms, the utilization of modeling concepts, based on first-principles physical foundations, offers unique advantages over the original experimental techniques.
It has become standard practice today to design materials, devices,
processing techniques and circuits 'on the computer' before committing to fabrication.
This trend towards computer experiments will certainly continue and expand in the next few years.
In this presentation, I shall review several of the interesting original developments and the current status of computational techniques in the design of micro/optoelectronic processes, devices and circuits.
I shall also attempt a view into the crystal ball to predict the future of this important and exciting field.

Prof. Wolfgang Fichtner
Head, Integrated Systems Laboratory
ETH Zentrum, ETZ, Switzerland