The importance of obtaining a compact analytical MOSFET model with physical model parameters is increasing with the complexity of IC design and by pushing the technology to its limit. Here we have reviewed the known modeling approaches and demonstrated that the surface-potential description based on the drift-diffusion approximation is practical and able to satisfy the foreseeable future requirements. It consequently opens a viable way to secure the robustness and reliability of circuit simulation results for future sub-100 nm MOSFET generations.