Photon Design completes TFLN waveguide ‘S’ bend simulations natively, in just 10 seconds.
Photon Design, a global leader in photonic simulation CAD software, is the first company to simulate Thin Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) bends natively, in just 10 seconds, with its FIMPROP simulation tool, which uses Eigen Mode Expansion (EME) processing. FIMPROP delivers results as rigorous as industry-standard FDTD tools, but hundreds of times faster. Because TFLN is a birefringent optical material that’s refractive index changes with voltage, so it is commonly used for the high-speed, phase switching needed for Mach-Zehnder Modulators (MZMs). These are central to coherent data communications, AI and co-located optics processors. Rigorous TFLN modelling is, therefore, essential for developing these emerging, high-data-rate, photonics applications.
Dr Dominic Gallagher, CEO of Photon Design, said: “EME achieves its efficiency by modelling only the live material regions of the TFLN adiabatic bend, rather than the full bounding volume. TFLN bends can have large bounding volumes so we used a 500um² ‘S’ bend as a benchmark, demonstrating rigorous simulation results in just 10 seconds. Not only does FDTD process the entire bounding volume, but its runtime also increases with both volume and simulation duration. This means that every time the bend dimensions double, the FDTD simulation runtime increases eightfold.”
“Photon Design completed the benchmark TFLN ‘S’ bend simulation in just 10 seconds on a standard CPU-only laptop. By comparison, estimates of simulation run times for FDTD on computer CPU are more than one hour and even when using costly, cloud-based, GPU processing, it’s run times are still around 10 minutes. This performance difference reflects the computational demands of FDTD, which requires more than 7.5 trillion calculations to produce the benchmark ‘S’ bend, versus only a handful of calculations using EME.
“Since TFLN design is highly iterative, with engineers often running more than 100 simulations for each design, processing speed is a critical factor when choosing a simulation tool.”
For more information on TFLN’s and Photon Design’s FIMPROP simulation tool, please contact Photon Design on [email protected]
For more information about Photon Design Ltd contact:
www.photond.com
Photon Design Ltd
34 Leopold Street
Oxford, OX4 1TW
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1865 324990