Lumerical Install: Lumerical products are now installed via the Ansys Automated Installer, available from the Ansys customer site. Linux users can install the standalone Lumerical Photonic Verilog-A package independently from the Lumerical products.
Ansys Login: Lumerical users can now follow the Ansys login flow for all products. Downloads from the Application Gallery no longer require signing in.
Linux Supported Versions: Lumerical now supports Rocky Linux version 8 and above, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 9 and above.
Ansys Lumerical FDTD
Modern Interface: A new user interface has been introduced for Ansys Lumerical FDTD, offering better usability and user experience. The new interface comes with a new tabbed toolstrip menu, with distinct tabs for each solver FDTD, RCWA and STACK, and provides less cluttered, quick access to relevant features like Ansys Lumerical Multiphysics.
Job configuration for CPU, GPU and Cloud simulations: We implemented a toggle button to easily switch from CPU to GPU and select from a drop-down menu the job launching resources (MPI, Slurm scheduler, local GPU card(s)) . It is also possible to set a sweep to CPU or GPU simulation in the Optimizations and Sweeps panel.
Resource Configuration Window: The panel was enhanced to allow for renaming or enabling a set of GPU or CPU resources, as well as assigning a set of GPUs per job. It is also possible to get the number of Streaming Microprocessors (SM) for a GPU card or a given set of GPU cards.
New features compatible with FDTD GPU simulations:
Dispersive materials are now supported in FDTD GPU simulations. The GPU express mode option toggle is no longer needed and was removed.
A comprehensive and accurate estimation of required GPU memory is now available via both the the GUI simulation checker, and the runsystemcheck command. The solver now provides a minimum and maximum memory needed for a given simulation, and if the hardware memory is too small, the job will be stopped before meshing to prevent failure.
Multi-GPU simulations: The performance of multi-GPU simulations efficiency have been improved. Simulation speed now scales with almost 1:1 proportion with the number of GPUs used, on a single node with NVLink technology. (Benchmarked on Metalens, Linux, Nvidia A100).
Diffraction Gratings: A new Layer repetition functionality and application gallery example for simulation of Volume Holographic Gratings (VHG) are now available with the RCWA solver. This new feature allows for efficient simulation of large periodic structures, enabling similar accuracy with up to 5x shorter simulation times. 5x shorter simulation times.
RCWA: The RCWA object now displays an arrow to indicate the propagation direction of the plane wave source in the Classic or Modern view port.
Metalens: The Lumerical - Zemax Metalens workflow has been improved with a new Windowed Fourier Transform calculation method in Zemax OpticStudio. This update allows for accurate multi-wavelength simulations.
Ansys Lumerical INTERCONNECT
The Optical Spectrum Analyzer element now supports window functions(Hanning, Hamming, and Blackman), enhancing the accuracy of power spectrum measurements for non-periodic signals.
Quantum Photonics: A new getting started article for Lumerical qINTERCONNECT is available in the Knowledge Base, this can also be accessed from the Optics Launcher.
Ansys Lumerical CML Compiler
The data validation capability of CML Compiler has been improved to provide a broader coverage for detecting inconsistencies and errors in user data, along with delivering clearer and more informative error messages.