Issue link: https://resources.randsim.com/i/1534810
OVERVIEW The Ansys Lumerical 2025 R1 major release introduces three key features for the Ansys Lumerical FDTD product: GPU-accelerated simulations, a modern user interface, and Volume Holographic Gratings in RCWA. FDTD can now run simulations with models twice as large on GPU, faster, thanks to 20% more efficient meshing and nearly linear multi-GPU acceleration. Additionally, FDTD displays a brand-new interface with an intuitive layout, enhancing software experience and usability. Volume Holographic Gratings can be simulated with RCWA and exported to Zemax and Speos raytracing software. Release Highlights – Ansys Lumerical Multi-GPU acceleration performance, GPU Memory and Faster Meshing Ansys Lumerical FDTD introduces three major features to accelerate GPU simulations. Multi-GPU Constant Acceleration ensures almost linear performance gains with multi-GPUs on single node, thanks to asynchronous data transfer, utilizing up to 80% of Nvidia NVlink bandwidth. GPU Memory Efficiency cuts memory usage in half for PML boundaries, allowing larger simulations with up to 10% speed-up in small systems. Finally, Faster Meshing reduces meshing speed by 20% for large metastructures, with meshing time scaling proportionally with the number of threads. The Ansys Lumerical advantage lies in running simulations faster, of larger models, with reduced meshing times. Modern User Interface for Ansys Lumerical FDTD The new modern User Interface (UI) for Ansys Lumerical FDTD offers better usability and improves job configuration flow for CPU, multi-GPU and Cloud simulations. The UI offers a new tabbed toolstrip menu that organizes buttons and user actions into a more intuitive layout, with distinct tabs including File, View, Design, FDTD, RCWA, and STACK. This interface provides less cluttered, quick access to relevant features similar to Ansys Lumerical Multiphysics. The FDTD tab and sweeps panel allow to toggle CPU/GPU and choose the local/remote resource with a few clicks. The Resource Configuration has been updated to assign custom GPU (or multi-GPU groups) per job. Volume Holographic Gratings in RCWA Volume Holographic Gratings (VHGs) are created by periodically modulating the refractive index within a transparent substrate. VHGs can achieve higher diffraction efficiencies, often approaching 100%, compared to Surface Relief Gratings. In 2025 R1 release, Ansys Lumerical introduces a new Layer Repetition feature for modelling VHGs using the RCWA solver. By repeating a single period of layers, users can simulate complex holographic structures quickly and accurately. The RCWA simulation results can be exported to Ansys Zemax OpticStudio and Ansys Speos via the Lumerical Sub-Wavelength Model plugin. This is particularly beneficial for managing spectrum and light direction in AR/VR and Head-Up Display applications. Ansys Lumerical 2025 R1 Highlights