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Shine docs

Roadmap

Shine today is a sound simulator for learning, teaching and early design: exact interference and resonance, reusable components, and the electronics around them. The roadmap is about making it useful for engineers designing real photonic systems, in this order: answer the questions engineers ask, get the numbers right, get the data out, then connect to real foundry models.

What’s already shipped is in the Changelog. Ideas and requests are welcome as GitHub issues.

0.1.0: released 2026-11-09

  • One editor for free-space optics, component boxes, waveguides and signals
  • Exact frequency-domain solver: interference, resonance, feedback loops
  • Reusable, nested components; registers, a clock and function cells
  • Coherent and independent light sources; real and false colours
  • Desktop (Linux, Windows, macOS) and browser builds; MCP server; documentation

0.2: useful to engineers (next)

  • Wavelength sweeps in the editor: transmission versus wavelength, in dB, for any design, from a chosen source or input to chosen outputs
  • Parameter sweeps: sweep a part’s parameter and plot the outputs
  • Real units: laser power in mW or dBm, readings in mW and dBm, losses in dB, insertion loss and extinction ratio readouts
  • Waveguide physics: group index and dispersion, propagation loss in dB/cm, wavelength-dependent coupling, so ring spacing and delays match real devices
  • Export: sweep and readout data as CSV, plots and the canvas as images
  • Validation page: simulated results plotted against textbook formulas (rings, MZI, Fabry–Pérot, couplers, the DFT mesh)
  • Release basics: an About box with the version, release notes, and instructions for unsigned binaries

0.3: connect to real designs

  • S-parameter import (Touchstone .sNp): use foundry kit (PDK) and FDTD results as black-box components
  • Command-line simulation: shine simulate project.shine --sweep … --csv, for scripts and CI
  • Monte Carlo: how a design holds up to fabrication variation
  • Two polarisations per port

Later

  • Layout export (GDS), for example through gdsfactory
  • Time-domain simulation: modulation, bandwidth, eye diagrams and noise
  • Signed and notarised desktop builds
  • A photon-counting and few-photon (quantum) teaching mode