Lumerical Introduces Fast, Broadband Omnidirectional Waveguide Design Tool with MODE Solutions 5.0 Release

Vancouver, British Columbia June 22, 2011 - Lumerical Solutions, Inc. (www.lumerical.com), a global provider of nanophotonic design software, today introduced MODE Solutions 5.0, the latest upgrade to its MODE Solutions waveguide design product.  MODE Solutions 5.0 extends the flexible eigensolver technology of MODE Solutions 5.0 to include an electromagnetic propagator able to address optical components measuring up to hundreds of microns in extent, including silicon photonics components, optical interconnects, photonic crystal devices and resonators.  MODE Solutions 5.0 incorporates prior advances in distributed and concurrent computing and optimization developed for FDTD Solutions to provide optimization and job distribution capabilities within MODE Solutions that will streamline the design of complex integrated optical devices destined for next-generation devices, components and sub-systems.

“The new propagator feature in MODE Solutions 5.0 is based on a fully vectorial approach that provides 2.5D accuracy with only the computational expense of a 2D algorithm,” said Dr. James Pond, Lumerical’s CTO.  “With the ability to model dispersive materials over wide bandwidths in a single calculation, and without the limitation of many propagation methods that only work along a single optical axis, MODE Solutions will address a broad set of guided-wave applications with Lumerical’s proven expertise at solving tough design problems of interest to our customers world-wide.”

Fast and Accurate Design Assessment

By leveraging Lumerical’s expertise in distributed computing on HPC systems and concurrent computing on cluster systems and in traditional office networks, the optimization and job distribution capabilities of MODE Solutions 5.0 allow designers to launch multiple parallel jobs on a number of independent computer resources without having to leave their workstation. 

“The waveguide mode solver in MODE Solutions provides fast and precise optical mode calculation of large mode area fibers for high power, high pulse energy fiber amplifiers,” said Xiang Peng, Senior Research Scientist at Raydiance, Inc. “MODE Solutions can analyze the impact of bend radius on effective mode area and the onset of self-phase modulation in fiber amplifiers and lasers, and optimize fiber tapers for application to fiber mode field adaptors.  We anticipate that the built-in job distribution and design optimization capabilities of MODE Solutions 5.0 will be able to simulate the optical performance very accurately of all the fiber optical components in high power and high energy fiber amplifiers and lasers.”

Powerful Capabilities for Silicon Photonics

According to Mark Webster of Lightwire, Inc., “We use MODE Solutions extensively for developing silicon photonic devices. Its accuracy and scripting environment enables us to design and characterize devices with speed and confidence, and the new built-in optimizer and concurrent computing capabilities will make this even better.  The new propagator feature is a unique and exciting development that we look forward to using with more challenging designs. Combined with FDTD Solutions, we believe this is the industry’s leading waveguide design and simulation suite for silicon photonics.”

The ability of MODE Solutions to address larger components than can be addressed with FDTD techniques, combined with its omnidirectional approach which overcomes the inherent challenges of BPM-like design tools, enables MODE Solutions to address large, high-index contrast components like multi-ring cascaded resonator filters, Bragg waveguide gratings, polarization diversity receiver optical circuits, contradirectional waveguide couplers, embedded ring resonators and photonic crystals. “Our research group, as well as the CMC-UBC Silicon Nanophotonics Fabrication course, uses Lumerical FDTD and MODE Solutions for silicon photonic device and circuit design,” added Professor Lukas Chrostowski at the University of British Columbia. “The propagator in MODE Solutions 5.0 is a significant new feature that will be critical for accurately simulating silicon photonic integrated circuits. The optimization and parameter sweeping tools will be valuable in quickly optimizing our designs, particularly since Lumerical takes advantage of our cluster, and perhaps more importantly also performs distributed optimization using the numerous desktop computers available at the university.”

Researchers and designers can access the concurrent computing capabilities available in MODE Solutions 5.0 by obtaining Extra Engines licenses. Each additional Extra Engine license enables another computer resource to process an independent job as part of a larger parameter sweep or optimization task.  By deploying MODE Solutions 5.0 together with Extra Engines, users can make maximal use of their available computing resources to rapidly explore a broad parameter space to identify the best design.

Availability

Lumerical is now shipping release 5.0 of MODE Solutions. Interested parties can download a free, 30-day trial online or learn more about MODE Solutions by visiting http://www.lumerical.com/tcad-products/mode/.

About Lumerical Solutions

Since its inception in 2003, Lumerical has pioneered breakthrough simulation technologies that help bring new optical product concepts to life. By empowering research and product development professionals with high performance optical design software that leverages recent advances in computing technology, Lumerical helps optical designers tackle challenging design goals and meet strict deadlines. Lumerical's design software solutions are employed in more than 30 countries by global technology leaders like Agilent, ASML, Bosch, Canon, Harris, Northrop Grumman, Olympus, Philips, Samsung, and STMicroelectronics, and prominent research institutions including Caltech, Harvard, Max Planck Institute, MIT, NIST, University of Tokyo and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Discover how Lumerical can help you meet your own design objectives by visiting us online at www.lumerical.com.

Contact:

Kristina Lee
Lumerical Solutions, Inc.
604-733-9006 Ext. 204
http://www.lumerical.com
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