Running Palace Simulations: Microstrip¶

Palace is an open-source 3D electromagnetic simulator supporting eigenmode, driven (S-parameter), and electrostatic simulations. This notebook demonstrates using the gsim.palace API to run a driven simulation on a microstrip transmission line with via ports.

Requirements:

IHP PDK: uv pip install ihp-gdsfactory
GDSFactory+ account for cloud simulation

Load a pcell from IHP PDK¶

import gdsfactory as gf
from ihp import LAYER, PDK, cells

PDK.activate()

c = gf.Component()
r1 = c << cells.straight_metal(length=1000, width=14)

r = c.get_region(layer=LAYER.TopMetal2drawing)
r_sized = r.sized(+20000)
c.add_polygon(r_sized, layer=LAYER.Metal1drawing)


c.add_ports(r1.ports)

cc = c.copy()
cc.draw_ports()
cc

png

Configure and run simulation with DrivenSim¶

from gsim.common.stack import get_stack
from gsim.palace import DrivenSim

# Create simulation object
sim = DrivenSim()

# Set output directory
sim.set_output_dir("./palace-sim-microstrip")

# Set the component geometry
sim.set_geometry(c)

# Configure layer stack from active PDK
stack = get_stack(air_above=300.0)  # auto-detects active PDK
sim.set_stack(stack)

# Configure via ports (Metal1 ground plane to TopMetal2 signal)
for port in c.ports:
    sim.add_port(port.name, from_layer="metal1", to_layer="topmetal2", geometry="via")

# Configure driven simulation (frequency sweep for S-parameters)
sim.set_driven(fmin=1e9, fmax=100e9, num_points=300)

# Validate configuration
print(sim.validate_config())

Validation: PASSED


/tmp/ipykernel_5740/940379228.py:14: UserWarning: get_stack(air_above/air_below) is deprecated and ignored. Use simulation.set_airbox(margin_x=..., margin_y=..., z_above=..., z_below=...).
  stack = get_stack(air_above=300.0)  # auto-detects active PDK

# Generate mesh (presets: "coarse", "default", "fine")
sim.mesh(preset="default")

Mesh Summary
========================================
Dimensions: 1040.0 x 54.0 x 17.9 µm
Nodes:      5,784
Elements:   40,950
Tetrahedra: 25,986
Edge length: 0.42 - 23.84 µm
Quality:    0.450 (min: 0.001)
SICN:       0.491 (all valid)
----------------------------------------
Volumes (2):
  - sio2 [1]
  - sin [2]
Surfaces (9):
  - metal1_xy [3]
  - metal1_z [4]
  - topmetal2_xy [5]
  - topmetal2_z [6]
  - P1 [7]
  - P2 [8]
  - sio2__None [9]
  - sin__sio2 [10]
  - sin__None [11]
----------------------------------------
Mesh:   palace-sim-microstrip/palace.msh

# Static PNG
sim.plot_mesh(show_groups=["metal", "P"])

png

Run simulation on GDSFactory+ Cloud¶

# Run simulation on GDSFactory+ cloud
results = sim.run()

  palace-577c4ddf  completed  1m 13s


Extracting results.tar.gz...
Downloaded 10 files to /home/runner/work/simulation-templates/simulation-templates/docs/notebooks/sim-data-palace-577c4ddf

results.plot_interactive()

Port mapping: Port 1: e1, Port 2: e2

results.plot_interactive(phase=True)

Port mapping: Port 1: e1, Port 2: e2