Release notes IPKISS Photonics Design Platform 3.6.0

The IPKISS Photonics Design Platform 3.6 features a new integration with the Eigenmode Expansion (EME) solver of Ansys Lumerical MODE. A lot of improvements and bugfixes were implemented also in IPKISS itself, the Caphe circuit simulator, IPKISS AWG Designer, and the IPKISS Link for Siemens EDA.

A full list of improvements can be found in the changelog.

Highlights are shown below:

Layout improvements

The placement engine (i3.place_insts) allows to place instances based on electrical ports identifiers. This makes it easier to solve a certain class of placement and routing problems with electrical devices.

For the designers that always wondered where their layout labels were, want to get rid of even more of those pesky DRC errors, and get frustrated at hard-to-control tapered waveguides, we have several bug fixes and improvements for you. See the changelog for a complete list.

AWG Designer

Two drawing improvements have been implemented to ensure DRC-clean AWGs in several technologies:

  • Improvements in the star coupler contour

  • Improvements in the fanout section from the star coupler

Caphe

Users can now run both a time and frequency domain simulation from the same Python process.