CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

Note: Palace is under active initial development, pre-v1.0. Functionality and interfaces may change rapidly as development progresses.

The format of this changelog is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[0.11.0] - 2023-01-26

• Initial public release on GitHub.
• Added support for anisotropic materials through the use of "MaterialAxes" under "Materials". These material axes allow for specifying symmetric material property tensors through a sum of weighted outer products of normal vectors. This can be used in conjunction with scalar material properties or multiple different anisotropic properties, though all properties are required to use the same set of basis vectors. Demonstration given for the coplanar waveguide example which now utilizes a sapphire substrate.
• Added to default postprocessing outputs: Bulk and interface dielectric loss writes energy-participation ratios in addition to quality factors associated with lossy regions, IO coupling $\kappa$ in addition to quality factor for eigenmode simulations, lumped element energy for transient simulations similar to eigenmode and frequency domain driven simulations.
• Changed configuration file syntax to simplify support for multielement lumped ports, where each index for a multielement port should now use the "Elements" object to describe the attributes for each port element.
• Changed configuration file keywords to better reflect meaning: config["Boundaries"]["Current"] => config["Boundaries"]["SurfaceCurrent"], and "UseGMG", "UsePCShifted", "MGCycleIts", and "MGSmoothIts" under config["Solver"]["Linear"].
• Changed geometric multigrid implementation to generalize across problem types (added for electrostatics) and use Jacobi-preconditioned Chebyshev smoothing with optional auxiliary space smoothing at each multigrid level as well. The auxiliary space matrices are constructed directly in H1 now to allow for matrix-free/partial-assembly support eventually. Geometric multigrid is turned on by default.
• Added structured simulation metadata output in the form of a JSON file palace.json written to the directory specified by config["Problem"]["Output"].
• Added JSON schema files for the configuration file format as well as a helper script to check a provided configuration file against the schema.
• Added optional interface to GSLIB library which enables "Probe" functionality to sample the computed electric and magnetic fields at points in space.
• Prepared to support builds using Spack. This includes an option in the build system for user-supplied dependencies as an alternative to the superbuild configuration.
• Updated submodules for superbuild, fixing a bug in SuperLU_DIST solver causing communication hangs for certain numbers of processors.

[0.10.0] - 2022-10-04

• Added interfaces to ARPACK and FEAST eigenvalue solvers.
• Added divergence-free projection for eliminating spurious DC modes for eigenmode solves.
• Added option for visualizing fields on mesh boundaries, output alongside the full 3D solution fields for ParaVeiew visualization.
• Added real and imaginary fields output for complex-valued phasors, and electric and magnetic energy density fields.
• Added convergence study for the cavity example application, and example Julia code for automated mesh generation, running of the solver, and postprocessing.
• Fixed bugs in mesh preprocessing related to precision of nodal coordinates when distributing a serial mesh to each process.
• Added option for "Driven" and "Transient" simulations to accelerate postprocessing by only considering port boundaries.
• Added -dry-run/--dry-run command line option to check configuration file for errors and exit.
• Changed dependency build process to rely less on PETSc build system, no longer give option to build BLAS/LAPACK libraries from source, added detection for OpenBLAS and AMD Optimizing CPU Libraries (AOCL) blis/libflame.
• Fixed issues when compiling with Intel or Clang compilers.
• Added CI test builds to test various build options and added easier default build options in CMake configuration.
• Add clang-format and JuliaFormatter configurations for automated C++, Julia, and Markdown code formatting.

[0.9.0] - 2022-07-11

• Added region-based mesh refinement with box or sphere refinement regions.
• Added new sparse direct solver interfaces to SuperLU_DIST and STRUMPACK libraries, to complement the existing MUMPS interface.
• Changed configuration file keywords for linear solver and preconditioner parameters to make more options available to the user and clarify them.
• Added check that all external boundary surface attributes must have an associated boundary condition specified in the configuration file (adds new "PMC" and "ZeroCharge" boundaries for natural boundary conditions).
• Added advanced configuration options for GMRES/FGMRES/SLEPc eigenvalue solver orthogonalization, making CGS2 (classical GS with iterative refinement) the default.

[0.8.0] - 2022-06-06

• Added new comprehensive example applications and detailed tutorials in the documentation.
• Added CI pipeline for build and regression testing.
• Fixed bugs for shared library builds, which are now the default for dependency builds.
• Added complex lumped port voltage and current output for computing impedance and admittance parameters from frequency domain driven simulations.
• Fixed a bug in mesh parsers for COMSOL and Nastran formats for high-order hexahedra, prism, and pyramid element types.
• Changed adaptive frequency sweep implementation to introduce optimizations which, in particular, speed up driven simulations with wave ports.
• Fixed bug related to domain dielectric postprocessing and surface dielectric loss postprocessing now automatically detects correct side for substrate-air interfaces (always evaluates on vacuum side).

[0.7.0] - 2022-03-25

• Added adaptive fast frequency sweep implementation for frequency domain driven simulations, activated with config["Solver"]["Driven"]["AdaptiveTol"] > 0.0.
• Changed ASCII file postprocessing to write out .csv files instead of generic whitespace delimited .txt for easier parsing.
• Changed field output postprocessing for visualization to save the mesh in the original mesh length units (rather than nondimensionalized ones).
• Added electric and magnetic field energy output to files as function of mode, frequency, time, or solution step, in domain-E.csv.
• Added option to specify circuit R/L/C parameters for lumped port boundaries as an alternative to the surface Rs/Ls/Cs ones.
• Added improved and expanded documentation.
• Added new MFEM features, including support for ND and RT spaces on wedge or prism elements and bug fixes.

[0.6.0] - 2022-02-17

• Changed implementation of boundary conditions and excitations to do a better job separating spatial discretization and algebraic operators. This is also in preparation for future additions of boundary conditions which are not quadratic in the frequency such as wave ports, as well as linear algebra improvements.
• Added a config["Boundaries"]["Current"] configuration file parameter to specify a surface current excitation, and removed the lumped port "Termination" option as it is no longer relevant. Magnetostatics simulations use this "Current" excitation rather than "Port" now.
• Changed lumped port and surface current excitations to now use a unit circuit voltage and circuit current excitation, rather than unit electric field or surface current density.
• Added numeric wave port boundaries for frequency domain driven simulations. To differentiate, lumped port boundaries are now specified using the keyword "LumpedPort" instead of just "Port" in the configuration file.
• Fixed farfield boundaries to account for non-vacuum materials at the boundary and added second-order option for absorbing boundary condition (ABC).
• Added finite conductivity surface impedance boundary condition, with optional thickness correction.
• Added dielectric loss calculation specializations for metal-air, metal-substrate, and substrate-air interfaces in accordance with this paper.
• Changed implementation of frequency domain linear algebra to eliminate the use of PETSc matrix types, relying instead on wrappers of the real and imaginary Hypre matrices making up a complex operator.
• Added geometric multigrid AMS solvers (in two variants) using h- or p-coarsening, which employs either a specialized smoother for Nedelec space coarsening or geometric coarsening for the auxiliary space solves.
• Changed build process to include PETSc as a submodule and configure as part the standard CMake build process.

[0.5.0] - 2021-11-08

• Changed postprocessing implementation which leads to some configuration file changes, namely config["Domains"]["Postprocessing"] and config["Boundaries"]["Postprocessing"].
• Changed some filenames for postprocessed quantities to be more intuitive.
• Added dielectric (bulk and interface) loss calculations for all simulation types. Correctly handles two-sided internal surfaces using "Side" specification.
• Added mutual capacitance matrix extraction to electrostatic solver.
• Added built-in mesh support for COMSOL (.mphbin and .mphtxt) and Nastran (.nas and .bdf) mesh formats.
• Removed Gmsh dependency for mesh format conversion.
• Added some improvements to the default build flags and dependency build options.

[0.4.0] - 2021-09-27

• Added "Capacitance" and "Inductance" options to extract surface charges and fluxes in frequency and time domain simulation types.
• Changed "Transient" solver implementation to use real-valued scalars (user must use a domain electrical conductivity as opposed to a loss tangent for loss modeling), for a roughly 2x performance improvement.
• Added new MFEM features, including upgrades to high-order Nedelec element spaces on tetrahedra which no longer require global dof reordering.
• Changed system matrix assembly to use Hypre P^T A P within MFEM and keep the full dense element matrices when the coefficient is nonzero (skip_zeros = 0 always). The stiffness and mass matrices thus always share the same sparsity pattern now.

[0.3.0] - 2021-09-02

• Added electrostatic solver for capacitance matrix extraction.
• Added "Termination" option for ports to allow for open or short circuiting but still enabling port postprocessing.
• Changed timer to separate out time spent for disk I/O during initialization and postprocessing.
• Added options to job wrappers for new instance types and subnet ID option.
• Added changes from Hypre and MFEM dependencies to include improvements and bug fixes from those libraries.

[0.2.0] - 2021-06-25

• Added a proper changelog for the project.
• Added time domain solver with various excitation options to accompany existing frequency domain driven and eigenmode simulation types.
• Added wrapper scripts in bin/ for launching parallel simulations either interactively or as batch jobs using PBS.
• Changed JSON configuration file keywords for frequency and time intervals.
• Added domain conductivity models for normal and superconducting metals.
• Fixed a bug for coaxial lumped port postprocessing.
• Added visualization of surface currents on domain boundaries to accompany existing $\bm {E}$- and $\bm{B}$-field visualization.
• Changed default length scale for nondimensionalization.
• Changed default filenames for port-related postprocessed quantities.
• Fixed many smaller issues and added various other improvements.

[0.1.0] - 2020-11-03

• Initial development release.