The increasing complexity of advanced nodes in semiconductor manufacturing, particularly in etch processes, is pushing equipment spending towards $40 billion by 2031. This growing challenge necessitates physics-based simulation tools like Sentaurus Topography to enable faster exploration and understanding of wafer-level outcomes. The industry is automating model creation and exploration workflows to scale expert capacity, shifting from manual trial-and-error to guided parallel exploration.
The bottleneck in advanced chip manufacturing is shifting from hardware to process engineering expertise, increasing demand for physics-based simulation and AI-driven automation tools.