SPINS Photonics
SPINS Photonics offers HyperWave, a cloud-based 3D FDTD simulation and inverse design platform for photonics engineers. The GPU-accelerated solver integrates automatic differentiation for adjoint-based topology optimization, enabling rapid iteration toward fabrication-ready designs. Engineers work through a Pythonic, Jupyter-native API without requiring local GPU hardware.
- Software Only
Funding
Founders
Founder details are not available yet.
Product
Problem
Traditional photonic device design relies on iterative manual tuning and CPU-based FDTD simulation, which is slow and limits exploration of complex design spaces. Gradient-based inverse design methods require tight integration between simulation and optimization, which many existing tools lack.
Solution
HyperWave is a cloud-based 3D FDTD simulation and inverse design platform built for industrial use. The solver is GPU-accelerated and includes automatic differentiation directly within the FDTD engine, enabling efficient adjoint-based topology optimization that converges to fabrication-ready designs. Engineers interact through a clean, Pythonic API and Jupyter-native workflows, with all computation handled on cloud infrastructure, requiring no local GPU hardware. The platform automatically handles absorbing boundaries with optimized adiabatic absorbers and supports standard silicon-on-insulator layer stacks and GDS layout import.
Target Audience
Primary customers are photonics engineers and researchers designing integrated photonic components who need fast simulation and topology optimization capabilities for manufacturable device development.
Features
- GPU-accelerated 3D FDTD backend optimized for NVIDIA B200 GPUs for high-throughput simulation and optimization
- Integrated adjoint differentiation within the solver for efficient gradient-based inverse design
- Jupyter-native Python API (hyperwave-community SDK) for defining simulations, running optimizations, and analyzing results
- Cloud-based execution with no local GPU requirement; local machine only handles problem setup
- Support for GDSII layout import via gdsfactory integration, including 2D density conversion and 3D structure building
- Automated adiabatic absorber optimization with less than -40 dB reflection for accurate boundary handling