GDSfactory: Build better hardware with better software.
Abstract
For efficient design, verification and validation of integrated circuits and components is critical. It is also important to have an adaptable and extendable workflow in the rapidly advancing field of silicon photonics. Due to the steadily increasing amount of components within a single circuit, a highly efficient workflow for designing functional building blocks, placing them within a layout and automatically interconnecting them becomes necessary for creating state-of-art circuitry. Furthermore, to allow for highly complex circuits, a hierarchical approach needs to be pursued, in which simple, rigorously simulatable components can successively be composed into larger components, which can be understood based on circuit-level simulations. For characterization of both, the simple components and complex compositions, efficiently usable flows for simulations and measurements need to be provided. In response to this need, we present gdsfactory, a powerful Python library designed to facilitate the creation of integrated circuits for photonics, analog, quantum, MEMS, and more. Gdsfactory offers a unified syntax that seamlessly integrates design, simulation, verification, and validation. This work describes the extensive capabilities of the library, highlighting its end-to-end workflow. We show how gdsfactory enables users to transform their chip designs into validated products, supporting efficiency and precision in silicon photonics design. GDSFactory has been used in educational context to teach silicon photonic design, notably in the UBCx course “Silicon Photonics Design, Fabrication and Data Analysis” taught by Prof. Lukas Chrostowski and for Princeton University’s “ECE559: Photonic Systems” course taught by Prof. Paul Prucnal.