An Improved Parallel Implementation of 3-D DRIE Simulation on Multi-core Processors

Deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) technique is a new and powerful tool in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication. A 3-D DRIE simulation can help researcher understand the time-evolution of Bosch process used in DRIE. Due to the high complexity of the algorithm used in the simulation, it is necessary to develop an algorithm that can speedup the simulation. This paper presents a parallel implementation of the 3-D DRIE simulation based on multi-core processor. The algorithm is based on data partition. We examine four different data partition strategies and find two-dimensional block-cyclic distribution can obtain perfect load balance. The experimental results show that the parallel algorithm obtains a substantial speedup over the serial algorithm on an Intel quad-core computer.