AbstractThis paper reviews the state of the art in hydrodynamic simulation of hot‐carrier transport in semiconductor devices with application to MOSFET substrate current calculation. Hydrodynamic equations for semiconductors and derived and discretized expressions of these equations for device simulation are presented. Special attention has been given to the discretization of the input power term that appears in the energy conservation equation. A new discretization method for the input power term, based on power generation consideration, is proposed. Energy‐based physical models for mobility and impact ionization are described for use in hydrodynamic simulation. Simulation results for both conventional and lightly‐doped‐drain MOSFETs are pr