Simulation of optical devices using parallel finite-difference time-domain method

摘要

This paper presents a new parallel finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) numerical method in a low-cost network environment to stimulate optical waveguide characteristics. The PC motherboard based cluster is used, as it is relatively low-cost, reliable and has high computing performance. Four clusters are networked by fast Ethernet technology. Due to the simplicity nature of FDTD algorithm, a native Ethernet packet communication mechanism is used to reduce the overhead of the communication between the adjacent clusters. To validate the method, a microcavity ring resonator based on semiconductor waveguides is chosen as an instance of FDTD parallel computation. Speed-up rate under different division density is calculated. From the result we can conclude that when the decomposing size reaches a certain point, a good parallel computing speed up will be maintained. This simulation shows that through the overlapping of computation and communication method and controlling the decomposing size, the overhead of the communication of the shared data will be conquered. The result indicates that the implementation can achieve significant speed up for the FDTD algorithm. This will enable us to tackle the larger real electromagnetic problem by the low-cost PC clusters.