Photonic Solutions Enewsletter

Photonic Solutions Portfolio Updates in 2019

Our Photonic Solutions portfolio has been improved in 2019 to create an even more seamless flow from photonic device development and PDK creation to PIC circuit design, layout implementation, and verification. Release highlights include:

• In the RSoft Photonic Device Tools, a significantly enhanced Custom PDK Utility allows users to add to a PDK active device models such as phase shifters and modulators; it also enables users to design and create layouts for custom circuits such as ring modulators in OptSim Circuit and OptoDesigner.
  
  
• In the Photonic System Tools, users can design files in multiple OptSim windows simultaneously, as well as pre-assign signal types to compound component input and output ports.
  
  
• In the PIC Design Suite, updates to the bidirectional interface between OptSim Circuit and OptoDesigner support automated electrical connections in layout.
  

OptSim Circuit

• Support for DemoFab PDK
• New bidirectional interface with OptoDesigner
• Parametric Spice netlist generation for layout-versus-schematic (LVS) in OptoDesigner
• Support for probabilistic constellation shaping for coherent systems
• Simulation speed improvements for photonic integrated circuits
• Algorithms for inter-domain conversions (time and frequency) during computations have been updated to enhance simulation speeds of photonic integrated circuits (PICs)
• Added ability to relocate PDKs to non-default location

OptoDesigner

• Improvements to the bidirectional interface with OptSim Circuit:
  • Changes to autorouter settings are now preserved
  • Auto-placement now recognizes clusters of hard-connected devices properly and places them only once
• Photonic LVS (Layout versus Schematic):
  • Annotation of devices and their parameters in GDSII files
  • Extraction of netlist from these annotations in OptoDesigner
  • Automatic generation of runset script for ICV LVS, comparing netlist from OptSim Circuit with netlist that ICV extracts from the GDSII file
• DRC algorithm improvements
  • A series of new DRC rules using a faster and more accurate algorithm speed up DRC calculations by up to 20 times!

Process Design Kit (PDK) updates 2019

• Added schematic capture and circuit simulation support for the following PDKs:
  • AMF
  • Infinera
• Updates to the following foundry PDKs:
  • TowerJazz
  • IMEC
  • AIM Photonics (AP-SUNY)