Ansys announced a collaboration with TSMC on multiphysics software for TSMC's Compact Universal Photonic Engines (COUPE). COUPE is a cutting-edge Silicon Photonics (SiPh) integration system and Co-Packaged Optics platform that mitigates coupling loss while significantly accelerating chip-to-chip and machine-to-machine communication. TSMC COUPE, along with Ansys multiphysics solutions that are integrated with Synopsys' 3DIC Compiler unified exploration-to-signoff platform, enables the next generation of silicon photonics and co-packaged optics designs for applications in AI, datacenter, cloud, and HPC communications.

The work spans multiple areas, including fiber-to-chip coupling, integrated electronic-photonic chip design, power integrity verification, high-frequency electromagnetic analysis, and critical thermal management. TSMC COUPE integrates multiple electrical ICs with a photonic IC and fiber optic connections into a single package. These include Ansys Zemax?

for optical input/output simulation, Ansys Lumerical? for photonic simulation, Ansys RedHawk-SC? and Ansys Totem? for multi-die power integrity signoff, Ansys RaptorX? to model high-frequency electromagnetic analysis between dies, and Ansys RedHawk-SC Electrothermal? for vital thermal management of the multi-die heterogenous system. Additionally, Lumerical allows custom Verilog-A models for electronic photonic circuit simulations, which work seamlessly with the TSMC Modeling Interface (TMI) and are co-designed with TSMC's Process Design Kit (PDK).