It is shown that a 4-fold improvement in static and dynamic CMOS circuit performance can be achieved by the introduction of strained silicon MOSFETs. A 2-fold improvement is obtained using pseudomorphic SiGe pMOSFETs in static CMOS. The industry standard compact model BSIM3v3 is able to capture the features of buried channel and surface channel SiGe based MOSFETs for SPICE simulations. TCAD shows that surface channel strained silicon MOSFETs offer better n-channel performance than buried channel devices, while p-channel devices buried up to 4 urn may outperform surface channel pMOSFETs. The impact of achievable mobility on device design and performance is presented. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.