Monday, February 4, 2019

VPIphotonics and Luceda Photonics streamline PIC design

VPIphotonics, which offers simulation software for photonic design automation, has teamed up with Luceda Photonics to streamline the design process for Indium Phosphide-based Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs).

Luceda’s IPKISS design platform combines circuit level design and simulation, layout and device CAD all based on Python scripting. Luceda’s SMART Photonics PDK allows designers to tape-out to the SMART Photonics foundry by means of a foundry validated PDK.

VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuits is a professional simulation and design environment for large-scale photonic integrated circuits and offers a large mix of general-purpose photonic, electrical and optoelectronic device models. The library extension VPItoolkit PDK SMART v1.5 enables a layout-aware schematic-driven PIC design workflow and provides access to a broad set of available standard building blocks of the SMART PDK.

The companies said the solution enables the designer to combine the best of both worlds by porting a schematic design to the Python-based layout.

“The IPKISS design platform supports a growing number of PDKs from the major photonic IC foundries in silicon, dielectric and III-V technology. By making our validated SMART Photonics PDK available from within  VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuits, organizations can now take a leap forward and create a design flow that is more reliable and scalable and that will enable them to consolidate their knowledge in a fast moving industry,” stated Pieter Dumon, CTO of Luceda Photonics.