January 12, 2006 Ottawa, Ontario -- Optiwave Systems , a provider of software design tools for photonics applications, has announced the release of its OptiFDTD MAX software, which is powered by EM Photonics' Celerity acceleration technology. The companies claim that the joint platform yields the computational power of a 25- to 50-node PC cluster.
With the release, Optiwave says it is pioneering complex Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) simulations with a desktop hardware/software platform that offers an affordable alternative to expensive, cumbersome cluster computing networks. Complemented by Optiwave's OptiFDTD software suite, the company says the platform is one of the only commercially available desktop products for running FDTD simulations at high-performance computer (HPC) speeds.
"OptiFDTD MAX equips photonics and biophotonics engineers with cutting-edge technology never commercially available until today," remarks Dr. Jan Jakubczyk, CEO and president of Optiwave Systems.
"Our alliance with Optiwave benefits photonic research engineers by reducing development cycles for new products," adds Dr. Dennis Prather, president and CEO of EM Photonics. "With Celerity acceleration technology, users will be able to analyze much larger structures in a fraction of the time it takes traditional software."
The companies say that the OptiFDTD MAX software is primarily suited for the design and simulation of advanced passive and non-linear photonic components.
"Simulations which normally took a week to complete will be finished in hours," concludes Dr. Richard Zhang, product manager for Optiwave.