> but if you look at a modern SPICE model for a transistor, a device that we claim to understand at the level of subatomic particles, then you'll find it's full of curve fits.
In both grad school and professionally I've worked in this area. You are not correct.
At the research level, they have simulations based on real physics (not curve fits) that will determine the transistor properties quite accurately. It's computationally expensive - a SPICE model needs the answer in milliseconds, and the simulation takes a few hours to get the answer.
A SPICE model is essentially (mostly) simple classical equations for a MOSFET, coupled with curve fits to fix Nth order effects. A lot of the curves are still based on physics knowledge, but parametrized to make it easy to fit the data.
In both grad school and professionally I've worked in this area. You are not correct.
At the research level, they have simulations based on real physics (not curve fits) that will determine the transistor properties quite accurately. It's computationally expensive - a SPICE model needs the answer in milliseconds, and the simulation takes a few hours to get the answer.
A SPICE model is essentially (mostly) simple classical equations for a MOSFET, coupled with curve fits to fix Nth order effects. A lot of the curves are still based on physics knowledge, but parametrized to make it easy to fit the data.