ANSYS Lumerical 2020 R2

Shared Features

Ansys licensing integration
Ansys-Lumerical tools have been integrated with the Ansys license server. Users can now connect to the Ansys License Manager when using an Enterprise license or continue to use their existing Business licenses on the Lumerical license server.

New Versioning Scheme
From the 2020 R2 release, Ansys-Lumerical products have adopted the versioning scheme used by all Ansys tools. Since this is the second major release for the 2020 calendar year, it has been labeled as 2020 R2.

Safe mode in scripts
The new “safe mode” provides users with enhanced security against malicious scripts. The safe mode is turned on by default in all Ansys-Lumerical products and prevents attackers from accessing or modifying system files.

Options for MPI and firewall exceptions
The Windows installer of the 2020 R2 release allows users to choose which MPI package they want to install and what firewall exceptions to apply. The default will install the MS-MPI package and apply no firewall exceptions.

Performance improvements in meshing and gradient calculator for PID
Finite difference meshing with 2020 R2 makes more efficient use of your CPU, with better thread support and performance improvements. Users can expect modest speedup when using conformal meshing in the CAD, or in engines with multiple threads, especially for projects with complicated geometries. Users of photonic inverse design that choose to calculate the gradient with the precise volume average meshing technique will see substantial speedup and improved accuracy.

DEVICE Suite

FDTD engine can calculate port modes
Starting from the 2020 R2 release, mode calculations at ports, sources, and monitors can be done in the FDTD engine. Mode re-calculations needed due to a change in geometry or simulation settings are no longer performed immediately. When a simulation is run any mode information for the simulation that needs to be updated will be re-calculated by the engine. This change allows the user to create, save and update their projects more quickly, and to offload larger mode calculations to remote engines. Note that the user still has the option to calculate mode information from within the CAD and scripts that examine mode information in the CAD will function the same.

Documentation improvements for Photonic Inverse Design
The documentation for the Python API and lumopt has been significantly revamped with a landing page that directs you to relevant resources, such as: Photonic Inverse Design Overview 9 and Getting Started with lumopt 3. In addition, the application example for designing a grating coupler with Photonic Inverse Design 1 has been significantly updated with a more complete and detailed workflow.

Lumped thermal resistance in fixed temperature boundry conditions
The fixed temperature boundary condition objects in CHARGE and HEAT solvers now have the capability of adding a lumped thermal resistance at the boundry. This enables the user to simulate practical devices where the heat sink is located away from the simulated structure by modeling the system outside the simulation region (connecting it to the heat sink) by a lumped thermal resistance. Check out this new feature in action in this App Gallery example 4.

Changes to stackdipole and stackpurcell script commands
As part of this release, there are some conceptual changes to the STACK dipole commands (Stackdipole and stackpurcell) to accept and return physical quantities only. Previously, the user would specify the dipole orientation as unpolarized, vertically polarized, or S/P horizontal. As a 1D solver (which implies cylindrical symmetry), the notions of S or P polarization do not make sense; these horizontal polarizations were only meant to be used as intermediate. Therefore, accepted orientation arguments are now “vertical”( “vert”), horizontal (“horz”) and “random” (or “rand”), which is a superposition of the previous two.

Support for background material in FDTD
The FDTD solver object now allows users to choose a background material from the material database. This will enable the users to easily use dispersive materials as background material in their FDTD simulations.

Calculation of group-delay in FDTD ports
FDTD ports can now calculate group delays. When the user enables the group delay calculation, the solver adds two extra frequency points around the center of the simulation band to calculate the group delay accurately. The spacing of these additional points can be controlled by the user from the Advanced tab of the FDTD solver property editor for added accuracy.

SYSTEM Suite

Single-config netlisting for Virtuoso co-simulation
Virtuoso co-simulation now allows user to set up a single HED netlist config for the hierarchy expansion of schematic circuit designs. This will provide a consistent hierarchy expansion for both electrical netlister and optical netlister, and dramatically simplify the simulation setup of electro-optical co-simulation.

Simplified Virtuoso interop environment setup
The environment setup for Virtuoso interop has been dramatically simplified and will requires fewer files and settings in users’ Virtuoso working directory.

Spatial correlation enabled compact model libraries and Monte-Carlo sweeps
CML Compiler can now accept information about spatial correlation and include it in the published compact model libraries. The Monte-Carlo sweep object in Interconnect can then run Monte-Carlo sweeps that include the effects of spatial correlation for circuits built with these compact model libraries.

Bug Fixes

Shared Features

Fixed issues with high resolution displays
Some user-reported difficulty with property editors and the visualizer when using high resolutions displays have been fixed.

Lumerical CHARGE 3D Charge Transport Simulator
Lumerical CLM Compiler Photonic Model Development Kit
Lumerical DGTD 3D Electromagnetic Simulator
Lumerical
Lumerical FEEM Waveguide Simulator
Lumerical HEAT 3D Heat Transport Simulator
Lumerical INTERCONNECT Photonic Integrated Circuit Simulator
Lumerical MODE Waveguide Simulator

ANSYS Lumerical Software supports the following operating systems (64-bit editions only):
- Windows 8.1, 10
- Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016, 2019

Lumerical software supports the following technologies:
- Amazon EC2
- Microsoft Azure
- HPC network technologies including: Infiniband, Myrinet, Gb and 10Gb Ethernet
- MPI frameworks: Microsoft MPI, MPICH, OpenMPI, IntelMPI and other
- commercial MPI distributions
- HPC schedulers: SGE, PBS Pro, OpenPBS, Platform LSF, HTCondor, etc.

Lumerical software has limited support on other operating systems that are known to be compatible with the supported systems listed above such as Fedora and Open SUSE.

Lumerical’s Finite Element IDE (FE IDE) uses a 3D rendering and visualization library that requires a compliant implementation of OpenGL 2 or DirectX 11. For optimal performance, please install the FE IDE directly on a locally accessible host computer with adequate graphics resources and up-to-date graphics drivers. The FE IDE has limited support on systems without compliant graphics drivers, including virtual machines and remote desktop interfaces.