Design tool release speeds complex photonics design

George Bayz, Vice President and General Manager, Optical Solutions Group, Synopsys, commented: "The enhancements in the latest releases of the RSoft product family support the complete photonic product development process, from initial design concepts to manufacturing. We have improved overall design flows with faster simulations, new design frameworks, component libraries and example models."

The RSoft Photonic System Design Suite includes the following new features:

• The OptSim DSP library now supports transceiver design and bit-error-rate estimation based on m-PAM, an important multi-level modulation format for data centres and other short-distance applications;
• The ModeSYS tool now includes a model that combines multiple CW signals at the same wavelength into a single spatial field profile, enabling more efficient multimode co-simulation with Synopsys' CODE V software and the RSoft BeamPROP tool;
• ModeSYS also supports user-specified launch conditions for large-core, step-index multimode fibres as either intensity or encircled angular flux, leading to more accurate results;
• In addition, ModeSYS includes new plots that enable users to visualise the distribution of power changes at different positions within a multimode fibre, eliminating the need to run multiple simulations for each point of interest;
• The OptSim Circuit tool includes a new interface with Luceda Photonic's IPKISS design framework for photonic ICs. By adding the capability to export netlists that IPKISS can use to automatically synthesise a mask layout, OptSim Circuit further enhances the photonic IC design flow from system-level simulation to fabrication; and
• OptSim Circuit also expands support for state-of-the-art silicon photonic design and simulation by adding the latest version of the IMEC foundry process design kit, version 1.4.

Dr. Erwin De Baetselier, CEO and Co-founder, Luceda Photonics, stated: "Once the functionality of a photonic IC is captured in OptSim Circuit, the next step to fabrication is translating the schematic into a physical representation via masks. The interface between OptSim Circuit and IPKISS provides users with a complete design flow from functional design to physical representation. Combined, these tools represent an ideal platform to leverage process design kit libraries such as IMEC iSiPP25G and connect circuit and layout representations with error-resilient translation steps."

The RSoft Photonic Component Design Suite version 2015.06-2 implements a new policy for cluster licensing, enabling more flexible use of multicore CPU architectures. This licensing policy allows the RSoft simulation tools to fully utilise the computing power of a single machine for node-locked licenses and up to two machines for a network license. To use more than two machines for simulations, users can purchase additional, simulation-only licenses. Many of the RSoft photonic design tools leverage all available computing power to reduce the time of a single simulation, or to perform distributed simulations on different parameter sets. This allows, for example, RSoft FullWAVE simulation users to access all of their machines' computing power for many single FDTD simulations of photonic structures, or for one or more clustered simulations. The RSoft photonic design tools can also speed up the calculation of bi-directional scattering distribution function files with RSoft DiffractMOD or FullWAVE tools for high-accuracy optical surface modelling. As in previous RSoft releases, the number of concurrent jobs is unlimited and users can therefore run multiple, simultaneous simulations.

Updates to Synopsys' RSoft product portfolio are available now. Customers with a current maintenance agreement can download the software from the Synopsys website using their SolvNet account.